Editor’s note: In addition to being informative, this post also outlines what IFMR Trust is looking for in potential hires. If you would like to see that immediately, go after the jump. Before Thanksgiving break I had the pleasure of sitting down at an informal roundtable with Dave Wallack, Senior Vice President of People to learn [...]
Editor’s Note: Aparna Dalal works with the Financial Access Initiative, a research consortium between New York University, Harvard, Yale, and Innovations for Poverty Action. FAI is focused on finding answers to how financial services can better meet the needs of poor households. FAI aims to provide rigorous research on the impacts of financial access and [...]
The composition of the microfinance sector is becoming increasingly hybridized, as microfinance institutions (MFIs) morph into profit-making entities, and global financial institutions such as Citigroup, Inc. or HSBC Holdings become (unintended) vectors of poverty alleviation (refer to “Global Financial Institutions and Microfinance: A Promising Marriage?” for further context). The equation isn’t anything new (in fact, [...]
Story source: Livemint “Abhihlasha,” a pilot project being run in the Uttam Nagar area of Delhi is putting the mobile phone banking story in action. The initiative is a collaboration between Eko India and Centurion Bank of Punjab (now taken over by HDFC). The modus operandi of the system has been designed simple. The mobile [...]
In the latest edition of Pragati, the Indian National Interest Review, Ankit Rawal proposes a new approach to the public distribution of food and the use of microfinance institutions. Since the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India has its share of flaws and is not always able to meet the needs of the poorer families, [...]
In response to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) call for financial inclusion - defined here as the ”delivery of banking services at an affordable cost to sections of disadvantaged and low-income groups” - several banks launched “no frills” bank accounts, or “nil or low balance account[s] with charges that make [them] accessible to vast sections of the [...]
One of the ongoing issues that appears to be hindering development in countries like India is the lack of equity based funding for small and medium sized businesses. These entities, which usually are too large to be benefited from a microloan but too small to have the necessary financials to secure corporate debt or private [...]
