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Financial Literacy – Key to Financial Inclusion

Microfinance Training — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:18:28 +0000

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.

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Dream vs. reality – Microfinance

Microfinance Training — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:06:34 +0000

Great post from Asli Demirguc-Kunt on her blog. Asli is the Chief Economist at World Bank.

Microcredit plays a role in Haiti

Microfinance Training — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:06:00 +0000

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.

For the full story, click here

L&T Finance to expand microfinance business

Microfinance Training — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:01:31 +0000

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.

For the rest of the story, follow this link

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Video – Roundtable Session on Client Protection

Microfinance Training — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:56:50 +0000

The roundtable session on client protection was one of the many interesting sessions which took place during European Microfinance Week 2009.

http://www.e-mfp.eu/node/231

India may get a Micro Finance Bill soon.

Microfinance Training — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:18:00 +0000

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.

Read full story here.

Afghan microfinance sector goes through a reform

Microfinance Training — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:31:04 +0000

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.

Read the rest of the report and download the study from this link.

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Unitus and Hewitt team up for Compensation and Benefits Survey

Microfinance Training — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:22:37 +0000

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.

For more information, contact

Gazal Vishwanath
gvishwanath@unitus.com
+91 998 669 0777

Srijan 2009 next week

Microfinance Training — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:15:05 +0000

Srijan by Intellecap, is an annual competition for entrepreneurs that have an innovative plan to address the resource and infrastructure challenges faced by the microfinance sector. Srijan aims to foster entrepreneurship, invigorate the microfinance sector, uncover new approaches to development issues, and build an enabling environment for future entrepreneurs, as well as to create an inclusive financial sector.

Visit the Srijan website at

http://www.intellecap.com/srijan2009/index.php

Microfinance – Moodys – and Kiva

Microfinance Training — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:37:54 +0000

Sylvia Ann Hewlett in her blog at HBR, has an interesting post on what companies can do to rescue morale. She talks about 2 interesting partnerships between corporate America and organizations in the social sector.

Click link to read full post

http://tinyurl.com/ygbwq9l

More power to Moody-Kiva and Pfizer-Grameen and let these begin many more such partnerships.

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