Let me come in with an anecdote. You're going to go in with a different world view, perhaps. I was in Sierra Leone a number of years ago, and an example of a microcredit arrangement that failed was a farmer who took out money to buy pigs; because there was a significant Muslim population, he wasn't able to sell any of his pork.
I would think this is an example in which having different people involved from different backgrounds is going to benefit you. In any kind of arrangement with banking, there are always going to be examples of projects failing, but in looking at problems from various perspectives you'll often see things a little differently, I would think, as well.