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The financial services industry has much to contribute to the UN and World Bank goal of full financial inclusion by 2020. This group will focus on industry contributions, ideas, barriers and enablers.
A whopping two billion people don't have access to any formal financial service. To put that in perspective, that’s twice the number of people who don’t have cell phones. Fintech represents a huge opp...
Why do you need an alternative? Current model is unable to serve a large base of potential consumers Existing model is costly and unaffordable In case of lending (specifically small value lending) t...
Prashant a friend (Working as a branch manager @ Pvt Sector bank) from Bhopal called up few days back and had a straight question “What are the opportunities for a banker in Payments Bank?” Below ment...
Is a move toward digital savings a better answer to the financial needs of poor women than continuing to roll out robust savings associations? An excellent paper just published by Women’s World Banki...
With Reserve Bank of India (RBI) giving in-principle approval to 11 entities to start Payments bank out of total 41 applications, same is being seen as a positive move by RBI towards making banking se...
From its modern beginnings with Grameen Bank, microfinance has focused on women. This made so much sense: they were traditionally underserved and financially disadvantaged, had clearer financial prior...
… are greatly exaggerated. This is very significant for financial inclusion. Many people are rightly considering how much easier financial inclusion would be, especially in rural areas, if we had a so...
A major challenge for full financial inclusion is extension to the poorest households in rural areas. Even in the presence of access to mobile services, the lack of financial literacy, unawareness of ...
Is that arrogant enough? But what if we could create a generalized digital lending platform that is specifically designed for the needs of the world’s poorest people? Is that remotely possible? What m...
Should financial institutions offer lines of credit (such as overdraft facilities) for the very poor? The question is prompted by some comments on a couple of my earlier posts, in which concern is exp...
We often talk about whether banking the poor can be profitable, as though that’s the only thing stopping banks from providing the financial services the poor need. But in reality, the bigger challenge...
The US Financial Diaries, which have been collected and analyzed over the past year or so by the Center for Financial Services Innovation in tandem with NYU Wagner’s Financial Access Initiative (FAI),...