Blogs

A basic account is a secure entry point for previously unbanked people to become more resilient. It also opens a wealth of opportunities – for investing in education, or growing their businesses. A six-year partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and WSBI, Scale2Save is a programme to establish the viability of low–balance savings accounts and to understand the extent to which savings allow vulnerable people to boost their financial resilience and wellbeing. Weselina Angelow, Scale2Save Programme Director, presents the programme, findings and the way ahead in our latest blog.

With the European microfinance community focusing special attention on women’s financial inclusion and celebrating the impressive work of the 2022 European Microfinance Award finalists, the publication of an updated edition of Alex Counts’ 'Small Loans, Big Dreams: Grameen Bank and the Microfinance Revolution in Bangladesh, America and Beyond' could not be better timed. As an inclusive finance practitioner with over two decades of experience working at the level of communities, financial institutions and the broader sector around the globe, I found this book particularly inspiring as we look toward new horizons in women’s financial inclusion.

Although nearly 250 million women in developing countries finally have some form of access to financial services, 742 million women – three times that many! – still have no access at all. To put this staggering number into perspective, if these women made up a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world. Furthermore, there are an additional 246 million women with inactive bank accounts, underscoring the fact that access to financial services does not always equate to usage. These last 742 million women are the most difficult to reach for several reasons: they are typically located in rural areas with no connectivity or access to mobile phones and constitute the least educated and poorest demographic in their respective regions.

In May 2021, the Delta wave of cases and deaths caused widespread devastation in India. Some estimates projected a staggering peak of nearly 40,000 deaths per day. While front page news focused on the shortage of oxygen supply and hospital beds, the challenge of immunizing such a populous country was undeniable: less than 3% of India’s population had received a two-dose regimen of COVID-19 vaccines and misinformation around vaccinations was rampant. Opportunity International Australia (Opportunity) works alongside MFIs like Equitas Small Finance Bank (Equitas), socially focused financial service providers with enormous capacity for large-scale and rapid community mobilisation. There’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage the core assets and competencies of MFIs – grassroots social mobilisation, last mile distribution network and existing trusted relationships in communities – to support the critical nation-wide immunization efforts on the road to post-COVID-19 recovery in India and other emerging markets. Opportunity, Equitas Development Initiatives Trust (the charitable trust created alongside the commercial Equitas entity) and local state government stakeholders together developed an innovative public-private partnership (PPP) model to address vaccine access in last-mile and vulnerable communities.

In September 2021, e-MFP published the results of a survey that mapped ‘Human Resource Development (HRD) Practices in the Microfinance Sector’ and highlighted opportunities for acting on those results. This was followed by a series of blogs presenting thematic case studies which explore the actions that some survey participants have taken to address each area and introduce practical tools that might guide practitioners in putting new HR practices into practice. This is the fifth and final blog in the series. Along with the previous blog that presents a framework to support managers in their HRD role, this blog outlines how MFIs can lift-up their HR function to a new level and thereby actively contribute to their organization’s success.