Your encounter with the SEWA women was an inclusive process. You learned from them and they learned from you. That was an element of financial literacy. Your tool was technology. Your corporate colleagues will learn at their own time. You were on a need assessment and that is where we all are saying we need to start- understanding clients needs in order to design suitable products for them. Sometimes, we only need paradigm pioneers to bring real positive transformation( see the few who brought an IT revolution)

Each country’s inclusion improvement is good enough. Soon, every country will have some sort of inclusiveness and we may not expect all countries to adopt mobile money like Kenyans have. Each country has its unique social demographic variable. By 2020, we shall be surprised how far we shall have come in financial inclusion. In between, each person and their contribution.

Inclusion is not an ice-cream that has to be eaten fast before it melts in the sun. Its not even a beach sand-castle that will crumble as soon as the waves come. Inclusion is a young tree growing taller and branching wider daily. Our role as its nurturers is to diligently water it, hedge it until it is huge enough to house as many birds as possible. So, let us celebrate every effort, like yours with SEWA women.

If we attain a certain velocity of inclusiveness, the unbanked will be sucked in inevitably. In Kenya, if you ever want to receive money( and everybody wants money) you have no choice but to buy a phone and get registered with Mpesa or other service providers. Nobody wants to be left behind. So, let us fan what is working and walk it across the terrain like an Olympic torch and as we plaster thick, some will stick.

Partnerships where vested interests are will always be bedeviled by conflict and misunderstanding. It is a reality we have to live with dealing with refined colleagues. But each day we learn and if we focus on the partnerships that work, we shall be using our energies better. Those which don’t work shouldn’t be allowed to drain our energies that we need so much for designing suitable products for the poor.

You are right in the need to rope in NGOs and other social driven service providers as they are closer to our targeted clients, the poor at the BOP.

Your contribution is very helpful in our thinking as your concerns are valid and need to be addressed.

Thank you Michael