Microfinance News Synopsis: Challenge of financial inclusion

Microfinance Focus, July 3, 2010: Microfinance News Synopsis brings a compilation of industry headlines broadcasted by other news media from across the world.

Challenge of financial inclusion: In his recent book Building Social Business, Muhammad Yunus notes that, in the 1960s, no one predicted that the Internet would take the world by storm; that laptops, palm-tops, Blackberrys, i-pods, i-phones, tablets and Kindles would be in the hands of millions. Similarly, in 2010, perhaps we are just as unable to look ahead to 2030. In short, how technology is going to shape our world and our world views is quite unpredictable. What is predictable, though, is that as newer technologies are ushered in, banking services will become more affordable and accessible to all. Harnessing this power of technology for financial inclusion is going to be a big opportunity and a bigger challenge for us. We all know from personal experience that economic opportunity is strongly intertwined with financial access [istockAnalyst]

Community finance needs some high tech innovation, say experts: Microfinance organisations should think more ‘21st Century’ and harness technology, social networking and crowd funding, experts from the sector have said. At a major European microfinance event in London last week, run by the Community Development Finance Association and the European Microfinance Network, commentators said new technologies should be used to help the sector become more sustainable and engage customers and investors. Caroline Mason, chief operating officer for Charity Bank, said: ‘We need to find very efficient ways for people to offer their time and money to people who don’t need a great deal of money. There are a couple of organisations like Kiva, for example, which are using technology as a way of doing this [Social Enterprise]

© 2010, Microfinance News. All rights reserved. 2008-09