Rural households continue to be underserved by financial institutions. Financial products and delivery mechanisms designed to serve urban, commercial populations are often ill-suited to rural areas where cash needs and income flows are more seasonal in nature than in urban areas. Further, accessing financial services by these dispersed populations with limited access to public transport is more costly. Rural and agricultural finance programs might include capacity building of financial institutions; product development for financial institutions; risk mitigation techniques, such as partial guarantee programs, and index-based insurance; and policy reform, such as collateral laws, land titling or bank branch regulations.
Rural Finance
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May 21, 2012 11:58 AM
This blog post was written by Aishwarya Ratan of Innovations for Poverty Action and Yale University who recently presented at After Hours Seminar #61, "Matching Products with Preferences: Innovations in Commitment Savings for the Poor." It was co-authored by Bobbi Gray of Freedom From Hunger and...
May 18, 2012 2:01 PM
Jessica Goldberg of the University of Maryland/Center for Global Development shares her key takeaways from the After Hours Seminar #61, "Matching Products with Preferences: Innovations in Commitment Savings for the Poor." In this video, Goldberg discusses the findings of a recent study she worked...
May 18, 2012 1:52 PM
Aishwarya Ratan of Innovations for Poverty Action/Yale University shares her key takeaways from the After Hours Seminar #61, "Matching Products with Preferences: Innovations in Commitment Savings for the Poor." In this video, Ratan discusses the implications of findings from recent studies...
Matching Products with Preferences: Innovations in Commitment Savings for the Poor (Event Resources)
May 15, 2012 4:35 PM
Saving is hard for most people, rich or poor, educated or not. Setting aside even small sums of money on a regular basis requires a conscious trade-off between buying something now in favor of achieving long-term goals, and even the most prosperous struggle to translate this intention into...
May 14, 2012 11:42 AM
Dr. Dean Karlan, Dr. Nava Ashrad, and Dr. Wesley Yin conducted an experiment in Philippines, where they offered commitment savings products to a subset of 710 randomly selected clients of a Phillipine bank. Since after 12 months the average savings balances increased, this study demonstrated that...
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