Malcolm and Colleagues,
I agree. In the long term most all of us would like to have access to modern financial services, taps providing clean water throughout the house and light at the flip of a switch. Given the billion or two who want these services and the low probability that they will delivered any time soon presents a clear case for providing financial services through Savings Groups as a very low cost, robust, locally controlled and virally self-replicating methodology that can bridge the gap for now.
I see that Hugh has bumped up the number of Savings Group members in Africa to seven million. Most all of this growth has occurred in the past five years. At the Savings Group conference in Washington DC in early March the practitioners signed on to "50 by 20", that is 50,000,000 savings group members by 2020 and we have the systems and the installed capacity to achieve this in the next eight years. The outcome 2.5 million groups with 50,000,000 members managing 1.3 billion in their group funds with $300,000,000 in profits from lending back into the pockets of the rural poor. In addition, a fifth will be linked to formal financial services and a fifth will be linked to other development efforts.
This 25% bump in financial inclusion (from 200 million today) can be achieved over seven years with an investment of $100 million per year world wide.
Not bad for a methodology that emerged out of a handful of villages in Niger in 1991.
Jeff
Jeffrey Ashe
jaashe@aol.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Malcolm Harper <malcolm.harper@btinternet.com>
To: MicrofinancePractice <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Apr 9, 2013 1:19 pm
Subject: Re: [MFP] Four recommendations for learning from clients
Thanks Hugh, the trouble is, if all of 'us' who are in microfinance really asked and honestly answered the question 'would you like that kind of financal service for yourself ?', we'd say 'no', and MF would grind to a halt. Some might say 'a good thing too', but it applies to VSLAs as well.
But it's not quite that simple. I wouldn't like to sit round a metal box with two or three locks once a week and tell my neighbours all about my financial affairs. I wouldn't like either to 'benefit' from a hundred meter walk to a new not-so-clean donor-financed public loo or water tap.
We have to accept that these are second rate solutions for 'the poor', band-aids, to be ashamed that they are necessary, to acknowledge that they are temporary, and to work to make sure that they too are replaced by decent services as soon as possible.
Malcolm
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 8:16 PM
Subject: RE: [MFP] Four recommendations for learning from clients
Agree with you 100% Malcolm. Don't agonise about how to treat poor customers. Just ask if it's something you'd like for yourself and act on that basis.
Wow ! Poor people have to be treated as customers ! What a revolution !
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 5:14 PM
Subject: [MFP] Four recommendations for learning from clients
Client-centricity is the latest buzz word in financial inclusion. Beyond the rhetoric, financial service providers have to figure out what it takes to listen to clients continuously and to implement what they are learning in the form of better products, delivery channels, or overall customer experience. A first step for providers is analyzing the value of understanding clients and how they can incorporate what they hear in ways that yield actionable insights. Some providers have client-centricity baked into their systems, operations, and human resources. For others, it is a bigger stretch to put clients at the center of the operational model.
With this in mind, CGAP and MicroSave have four recommendations for listening to and learning from clients:
- Take a holistic view of the client
- Listen to clients systematically and continuously
- Use the right methodology
- Integrate client understanding throughout operations
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