Affirming that financial inclusion wont happen without financial literacy, Union Finance Minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee, has brought the spotlight back on the need for more Financial Literacy programs.
At an international workshop on ‘Delivering financial literacy: challenges, strategies and instruments,’ organised jointly by the Reserve Bank of India and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Mr. Mukherjee observed that the “outcome from the elaborate system of priority sector lending in India has been mixed.”
The Reserve Bank of India has recently initiated ‘Project financial literacy’ in 13 languages to disseminate information about banking concepts to various target groups.
The Finance minister said in India promoting financial education should be more at the basic level aimed at reducing the vulnerability and expand opportunities for the poor.
OECD’s efforts at creating financial inclusion and their study on the subject encompassing practical guidelines on good practices in financial education and awareness, were acknowledged by Mr. Mukherjee.
MTA continues to explore opportunities for expanding the reach of financial literacy programs in conjunction with other stakeholders in the sector.
Newsweek reports on how microfinance is playing its part in the Haiti earthquake disaster relief.
A microlender was able to distribute cash in Haiti much more quickly than traditional banks.
How microcredit can play a larger role in disaster recovery.
Hollywood couldn’t have done it better. Late in the afternoon on Jan. 22, an armored car packed with $2 million in cash rolled out of J.P. Morgan Chase headquarters in downtown Miami, headed to the Homestead Air Force Base. Thirty-four bricks of bank notes packed into ordinary office supply boxes were loaded onto a C-17 transport plane redeployed from Langley, Va., and dispatched to Haiti, lighting up switchboards at the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, the Federal Reserve, and military rescue bases in Port-au-Prince.
Buoyed by the success rate of its microfinance business in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, L&T Finance, the financial services arm of Larsen & Toubro, is set to expand to Gujarat and Orissa over the next three months.
A team of microfinance professionals at L&T Retail Finance Group, which is in turn a part of L&T Finance, is assessing villages in other northern states, where the company plans to foray shortly.
“We are extremely happy with the growth of our microfinance business and we will very soon be present in almost every state,” said Dinanath Dubhashi, vice-president, L&T Retail Finance Group.
The much-waited Micro Finance Bill is likely to see the light of day during the upcoming Budget Session as the government is doing the groundwork to reintroduce it. “Micro finance is growing at a fast pace. However, it is neither regulated nor supervised. A Bill will give more legitimacy to the sector. We are trying to complete the work and reintroduce the Bill in the upcoming budget session of Parliament,” said an official in the ministry of finance.
Need for the right operational processes and the right skills for the human resources in the right is clearly highlighted in this study from ReliefWeb
The microfinance sector in Afghanistan is going through a period of reform. This is due largely to the consequences of an early emphasis on rapidly achieving operational sustainability through growth in client numbers and loans made. This focus reduced attention given to issues of portfolio quality, accountability, and meeting client interests, and was coupled with a lack of acknowledgement of the existing informal credit market. All of this laid the foundation for the current problems that microfinance institutions (MFIs) are facing with increasing client default rates and, in some cases, fraud.
The survey is the first initiative of Unitus’s newly launched MFI Industry Compensation & Benefits Forum, an endeavor to bring a better understanding of remuneration issues and practices in microfinance to the industry.
In early 2009, we began as a proposition on paper, with the single goal of bringing solutions to the Microfinance sector. Thanks to the investors (Intellecap) for believing in a concept that was just a spreadsheet 9 months ago. Thank you to all clients for your faith in a new concept. Thanks to the students who had complete faith in us and trusted their careers to us (we are glad we could deliver on what we promised you). All team members of MTA who have worked hard to do all of the above – the success of MTA is the biggest form of recognition and appreciation for you.
Today MTA has a monthly capacity of training and deploying 500 Loan Officers. We look forward to scaling this capacity further, as we know that the microfinance sector needs much more than this.
We have grown from 1 single location in Jaipur, Rajasthan to a presence in 9 locations across 5 states today. Knowing that this is not enough, we will continue to identify and grow into new geographies this year.
Thank you to all those who have supported us through your thoughts, suggestions and good wishes. We look forward to meeting and exceeding your expectations in 20 10.
As the MFI sector continues to grow, and fast growing organizations face the challenge of ramping up operations, one key question faced by every CEO is – For every month of delay in opening a branch – what is the loss incurred ? Also if there is an opportunity cost – how much is it ?
While the formulae could be a fancy equation with many variables, one could do a “Back of the envelope version” to get at a number.
For us at MTA, this is an important area of discussion, as most of the times we see that branch expansions are being held up due to lack of staff. Recruitment cycles are painfully long and the demand on existing management bandwidth is huge.