Anu Bajaj of DFID on how donors, private firms and governments can work together for branchless banking
by Jim Rosenberg : Thursday, October 1, 2009
We’ve been running an occasional podcast series with some of the voices we’re listening to this year as part of the CGAP/DFID Branchless Banking in 2020 scenarios work. The process is based on one driving question: How can government and private sector most affect the uptake and usage of branchless banking among the unserved majority by 2020? You can participate directly through this blog or posting discussions through our Mobile Banking and Microfinance LinkedIn Group. –Jim
Anuradha is an international trade and financial sector professional with over fifteen years of experience covering Asia and Africa. She is currently Acting as Team Leader of DFID’s Financial Sector Team as well as leads on their engagement on Branchless Banking. Prior to joining DFID, Anuradha was a banker with ABN Amro and ANZ Grindlays Bank in India. She is an economist with an MBA from Mumbai University and an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.I had the opportunity to speak with Anu for a few minutes on the side of a scenarios workshop that was held in Cape Town last spring. Here she reflects on the role that development organizations can play in increasing access to finance along with governments and the private sector, and the especially promising concept of using government transfers to increase access to finance for the poor.
October 6th, 2009 at 2:42 pm, Aymen Kharal ()
Regulators role in creating enabling environment is key,the strategy should be plastic + mobile led where govt should support & incentivize establishment of agent/eft POS network in rural areas.
2 Comments
October 3rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm, Archil Bakuradze ()
Good point about the balance between customer protection and simplifying access, which is of course a policy issue and will be very much country-specific. I think G2P mobile finance services should be offered as an additional channel for recipients of social assistance, allowing greater choice to customers, and should be introduced when there is a properly functioning mobile payments infrastructure. The maximum Governments should provide is an enabling environment. This will itself contribute towards emergence of viable business models, which will take care of, inter-alia, critical task of customer education.