Tamara Cook talks about one of the partners of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Opportunity International Bank of Malawi, as an example of how banks have moved beyond branches to try to solve the problems that they faced of reducing costs and reaching people where they lived.
Nov 08, 2010•5 min
“Today we have a historic opportunity to use mobile phones to solve two major problems that bankers faced for generations: how do you get the cost of serving clients down, and how do you reach people who leave far from the branch.” Tamara Cook, Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Nov 01, 2010•8 min
Increasing competition amongst financial institutions in Bangladesh has given clients many options to choose from. But competition has brought with itself distortions in delivery systems, stress, and over indebtedness among clients. Preparing for managing delinquency has thus been the priority for many service providers. Stuart Rutherford is the founder of SafeSave, a microfinance institution in Bangladesh and author of the books The Poor And Their Money and Portfolios Of The Poor. Rutherford ta...
Oct 18, 2010•10 min
Listening to clients is at the heart of providing financial services in a market-led approach. Financial service providers should always keep their eyes and ears open for what their clients are saying in terms of the design and delivery of the product. Stuart Rutherford is the founder of SafeSave, a microfinance institution in Bangladesh and author of the books The Poor And Their Money and Portfolios Of The Poor. Rutherford talks about the importance of listening to clients, how best MFIs can le...
Oct 11, 2010•7 min
Roger Voorhies, Founder and Former CEO, OIBM talks about the bank’s institution building, the bank’s experience with technology - cards, m-banking, ATMs, and whether the OIBM experience can be replicated in other regions.
Oct 07, 2010•7 min
Roger Voorhies talks about the biggest challenges and natural advantages of doing microfinance in Africa. He also introduces the history of OIBM, one of the leading microfinance banks on the continent.
Sep 27, 2010•10 min
Mark Schreiner, Director, Microfinance Risk Management talks about the future of poverty scoring and gives examples of how MFIs use this powerful tool.
Sep 20, 2010•6 min
Mark Schreiner, Director, Microfinance Risk Management explains where a score card comes from, what are the challenges of implementing the system, and how one trains analysts.
Sep 13, 2010•9 min
Mark Schreiner, Director, Microfinance Risk Management talks about the poverty scoring as a way for microlenders to measure how poor their clients are in a quantitative way and why funders could be interested in poverty scoring.
Sep 06, 2010•8 min
Michael McCord, President, MicroInsurance Centre, LLC talks about the factors that push the growth of microinsurance, the evolution of products and the biggest challenge in microinsurance.
Jun 28, 2010•9 min
Michael McCord, President, MicroInsurance Centre, LLC talks about the best potential delivery channels for michroinsurance. Since its inception as an initiative of MicroSave, The MicroInsurance Centre, LLC has worked on several levels to promote responsible microinsurance. The MicroInsurance Centre is the only independent institution that is entirely focused on actively promoting the partnership model of microinsurance. In this model, appropriate institutions are linked with regulated insurance ...
Jun 28, 2010•7 min
Michael McCord, President, MicroInsurance Centre, LLC gives a definition of microinsurance and talks about the mechanisms of implementing microinsurance successfully. Since its inception as an initiative of MicroSave, The MicroInsurance Centre, LLC has worked on several levels to promote responsible microinsurance. The MicroInsurance Centre is the only independent institution that is entirely focused on actively promoting the partnership model of microinsurance. In this model, appropriate instit...
Jun 21, 2010•8 min
Daryl Collins, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" and Senior Associate, Bankable Frontier Associates talks about implementing lessons from Portfolios of the Poor in South Africa. Daryl's principal area of research is estimating the impact of microfinance programs on the financial management of poor households. From 2003 to 2006, she was the principal investigator for a longitudinal study called the Financial Diaries project funded by the Ford Foundation and DFID in South Africa. This study be...
Jun 09, 2010•8 min
Daryl Collins, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" and Senior Associate at Bankable Frontier Associates talks about implementing lessons from Portfolios of the Poor in South Africa. Daryl's principal area of research is estimating the impact of microfinance programs on the financial management of poor households. From 2003 to 2006, she was the principal investigator for a longitudinal study called the Financial Diaries project funded by the Ford Foundation and DFID in South Africa. This study ...
Jun 09, 2010•8 min
Sukhwinder Singh Arora, co-author of two books ‘Small Customer, Big Market: Commercial Banks in Microfinance’ (with Malcolm Harper) and ‘The Poor and their Money’ (with Stuart Rutherford) talks about how the lessons from Portfolios of the Poor help providers design better products. Over the past 25 years, Sukhwinder Arora has worked for a range of development organisations at micro, meso and macro level. Sukhwinder’s core work has been on policies and programmes designed to enable poor people to...
Jun 08, 2010•8 min
Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, talks about the value proposition of microfinance and how this relates to the price for financial services. Richard has been with CGAP since its founding in 1995. He has written or contributed to numerous CGAP publications. His current areas of focus include interest rate issues, over-indebtedness, and regulation of microfinance. He is a core faculty member of the Microfinance Training Program at The Boulder Institute.
Jun 07, 2010•8 min
Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, talks about the value proposition of microfinance and how this relates to the price for financial services. Richard has been with CGAP since its founding in 1995. He has written or contributed to numerous CGAP publications. His current areas of focus include interest rate issues, over-indebtedness, and regulation of microfinance. He is a core faculty member of the Microfinance Training Program at The Boulder Institute. MicroSave and the Financial Access Ini...
Jun 07, 2010•6 min
Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, highlights the biggest findings of “Portfolios of the Poor”. Richard has been with CGAP since its founding in 1995. He has written or contributed to numerous CGAP publications. His current areas of focus include interest rate issues, over-indebtedness, and regulation of microfinance. He is a core faculty member of the Microfinance Training Program at The Boulder Institute. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portf...
Jun 06, 2010•10 min
Yaw Nyarko, Professor of Economics at New York University and Director of NYU Africa House, talks about the particulars of the research for Portfolios of the Poor and how it will influence the development of new research trends. Yaw Nyarko is a theoretical economist whose current work focuses on two main areas: (1) models where the economic actors engage in active learning about their environments and (2) human capital models of economic growth and development. MicroSave and the Financial Access...
Jun 06, 2010•8 min
Jonathan Morduch, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" shares his opinion on what the book tells us about reimagining microfinance. Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative, a consortium of researchers focused on financial inclusion.
Jun 05, 2010•7 min
Jonathan Morduch, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" shares his opinion on what the book tells us about reimagining microfinance. Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative, a consortium of researchers focused on financial inclusion. Morduch has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard University, and has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, and the Univ...
Jun 04, 2010•9 min
William Easterly explains how Portfolios of the Poor gives us a more realistic look at the life of poor people and how it changes the perspective on the “consumption smoothing” concept. William Easterly is an American economist, specializing in economic growth and foreign aid. He is a Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is also a visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a non-resident Fellow o...
Jun 04, 2010•8 min
Stuart Rutherford, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" talks about Grameen-2, SafeSave and Buro in Bangladesh. He also gives his opinion on the potential of e-banking and m-banking for the microfinance industry. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portfolios of the Poor for a two-day virtual conference. This event will be moderated by co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham Wright. Dat...
Jun 02, 2010•10 min
Stuart Rutherford, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" talks about the financial products that poor people need from MFIs. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portfolios of the Poor for a two-day virtual conference. This event will be moderated by co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham Wright. Dates: June 8-9, 2010 For more information and free registration, please visit www.MicroSave...
Jun 01, 2010•8 min
Stuart Rutherford, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" and Graham Wright, Program Director, MicroSave , talk about the key lessons of the book in terms of poor people's financial behavior. Stuart is the founder of SafeSave Bangladesh, an organization that provides reliable basic banking services, profitably, to poor men, women, and children in Dhaka. He became interested in how poor people manage their lives and their money as a result of working in developing countries as an architect and the...
May 28, 2010•7 min
Stuart Rutherford, co-author of “Portfolios of the Poor”, talks about the inspiration for the research on financial diaries that was the foundation of the book. Stuart is the founder of SafeSave Bangladesh, an organization that provides reliable basic banking services, profitably, to poor men, women, and children in Dhaka. He became interested in how poor people manage their lives and their money as a result of working in developing countries as an architect and then for NGOs. From this perspect...
May 27, 2010•9 min
Bob Christen, director of the Financial Services for the Poor initiative at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, introduces the groundbreaking book, Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day. The authors of the book recorded and analyzed the financial diaries of a group of households in Bangladesh, India and South Africa.
May 25, 2010•7 min
Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, discusses how the Compartamos IPO affected investors and competitors, and whether the experience was a singular event or is likely to be repeated.
May 24, 2010•8 min
Carlos Danel, Co-CEO and founder of Compartamos, speaks about the necessary stepping stones for mobilizing savings and shares his views on the lessons from the IPO of Compartamos.
May 23, 2010•7 min
Carlos Danel, Co-CEO and founder of Compartamos, speaks about the ways in which the bank managed to weather the crisis and continue its strong growth.
May 22, 2010•8 min