| MicroSave’s work on savings continues to expand in all areas of our operations in Asia and Africa mainly driven by three factors: 1. Our extensive, and growing, work on mobile money/ m-banking; 2. Our work to provide training and technical assistance to clients introducing savings products; and 3. On the basis of a new contract from the IFC to study the demand and supply sides of deposit mobilisation in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and to work with selected financial institutions to prepare pilot-test plans for new savings and microinsurance products. Financial inclusion necessarily requires providing access to a range of financial services: credit, remittances, insurance and, in particular, savings – as the recent virtual conference on the “Portfolios of the Poor” so clearly articulated. The need for effective, client-responsive savings services is particularly acute in India, where the No Frills Accounts and Banking Correspondent channel remain under-used and unsustainable. As part of its annual review of the state of the microfinance market in India, MicroSave developed 10 India Focus Notes describing some of the opportunities and challenges ahead for the industry, as well as the prospects for the delivery of savings and microinsurance services to the poor. Many believe that mobile money/m-banking will play an important role in extending financial inclusion and savings services for the poor – a view to which MicroSave also subscribes. So we are delighted to publish two new India Focus Notes examining the perceptions of agents and of clients, as well as six new Briefing Notes on mobile money/ m-banking distilling and expanding some of the discussions at the 2009 M-banking Dialogue held in Manila last December attended by a group of focused practitioners. In the next few months, MicroSave will launch a social performance management initiative to make SPM more relevant for MFIs, so that SPM becomes an integral and valued part of their business and drives improved quality of products/services for clients in line with each MFI’s mission, as well as improved staff retention. Watch this space! |
