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> Posted by Meghan Greene
Today marks the first annual celebration of International ChildFinance Day, an initiative launched by Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI). Child & Youth Finance International is a collaborative effort among banking networks, NGOs, multilaterals, private sector partners, and academics to build a movement toward appropriate financial products and services that help children and youth build assets and more secure futures. The organization is in its infancy itself, having been founded only in July of last year. Despite its young age, though, CYFI has big ambitions: by 2015 it hopes to extend to 100 million children and youth in 100 countries access to quality financial products and services, as well as financial education.
Having worked on the Financial Access at Birth (FAB) program, we’re quite familiar with ambitious goals that are at once daunting and exhilarating. FAB’s concept is to extend financial inclusion by offering every child born a unique identification number and a $100 savings account, accessible via mobile and electronic branchless banking. It’s an exciting idea that would build on the power of incentives to achieve scale, sustainability, and impact, and it’s founded on many of the same ideals and ideas that motivate CYFI’s leaders and collaborators. Over the past several months, FAB has explored partnerships with a variety of experts who have the knowledge and skill sets to make this big idea a reality, and we continue to be impressed by the breadth of knowledge and generous spirit of our peers. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Holly Padgett
Can financial access and citizenship feasibly begin at birth? According to the Financial Access at Birth (FAB) initiative, with the right resources and momentum, it can. Bhagwan Chowdhry, FAB’s founder, recently published an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) that highlights the main ideas behind FAB and addresses some of the tough questions raised by supporters of the program.
The aim of FAB is to provide an initial deposit – say $100 – in an electronic savings account for every child at the time of birth. The bank account would be paired with a universal ID and mobile technology, creating a powerful system of incentives that would foster financial inclusion and possibly access to other services. Ultimately this system would lay the “plumbing” for numerous social, financial, and health services. According to Chowdhry, “it is an investment for an economically democratic society”. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
Ólafur R. Grímsson (President of Iceland), Rajendra Pachauri (Chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and Bhaghwan Chowdhry (Founder, Financial Access at Birth) (l-r) present at PopTech 2011.
Planning a vacation or how to spend your professional development budget? I could not more highly recommend an investment of time and resources than PopTech’s next gathering. You can think of it as a luxurious intellectual cruise, where you consume delicious visions for the future, innovations to improve lives, arts to stimulate the mind and heart, and fellow passengers with whom to dream — and more importantly, take on future adventures and paths of service.
FAB was honored to be a participant in PopTech 2011. You can get a sense of what this gathering is like by viewing this recording and this follow-up written interview. Namely, PopTech convenes an eclectic mix of thought leaders and visionaries and invites them to share their ideas and progress towards realizing them through a number of activities, including 20-minute presentations. These are not the typical PowerPoint-filled plenary presentations or panels to which you’re accustomed at other conferences. The day FAB was on stage, for example, examined the themes of rebalancing, reframing, restoring and researching; presentations were made by a family historian, a Nobel Prize winner, a space suit developer, and a president. The same day, an iPad app was launched; a funky band played; and we met a slew of impressive young scientists and innovators. The experience was truly a cynicism evaporator. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
A Freedom from Hunger Youth Savings Group in Mali.
Worth checking out at the SEEP Network Blog: a piece on savings by CFI Program Manager Rosita Najmi.
Najmi’s guest post, like the Formal Savings Track of the 2011 SEEP Annual Conference from which it emerges, tackles several questions facing the industry:
- Is there a business case?
- How do I design a savings product that is relevant and that clients will value?
- What changes do I need to manage in order to add savings to my suite of products and services?
- What do we do differently to provide savings opportunities for youth?
To read more, we invite you to click here on “Scaling Up Formal Savings: Lessons from the SEEP Annual Conference.”
Have you read?
Promoting Formal Financial Savings: Know Your Goal, Know Your Competition
What’s ‘A FAB Idea’? Financial Access at Birth, Says ‘The Economist’
At the Gates Foundation, Savings Is It
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
Financial Access at Birth (FAB) recently completed a preliminary needs assessment and feasibility study for its first pilot and is eager to introduce its findings to potential donors and implementation partners. More on that soon…
In the meantime, we write to acknowledge the rich learning and exchange of ideas we enjoyed through participating in the 2011 SEEP Network annual conference.
Day 1: FAB spent Member Day with associates of the SEEP Savings-Led Financial Services Working Group. With a focus on informal savings groups, the Working Group reported on an October 2011 gathering it organized, the Arusha Savings Groups Summit, which brought together over 250 savings groups practitioners, representing 46 countries. The format of the conference was participatory and included debates, research presentations, small group discussions, and a World Café exercise to share ideas on how better to collaborate and achieve impact. In addition to a follow-up conference in September 2012 (organized by Oxfam America, with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The MasterCard Foundation, and SEEP), the summit resulted in the creation of a publication with six chapters on themes of importance to the industry that were discussed at the event. These themes include the need for savings groups, related delivery channels, linkage of savings groups to formal financial services, savings-led development, development-led savings, and more. Among the contributing authors to this publication will be Jeff Ashe, Susan Johnson, Joanna Ledgerwood, Paul Rippey, Kim Wilson, and Megan Gash. We can all look forward to the publication in early 2012. In the meantime, enjoy this excellent website and blog regarding savings groups. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
Disclaimer: The following is not an official endorsement by this blog or its host organization. It is a personal reflection of the author and an unabashed promotion of an upcoming workshop on Wednesday, November 2nd, at the SEEP Network Conference.
“MONEY: a bank account parent and teen manage together” was the subject line of an email I received in late September from one of my personal banks, ING Direct. The opening line of the message that introduced me to one of its newest products was “It’s a learner’s permit for handling money.”
“Genius,” I thought. It was yet another proud moment I experienced as a customer of ING Direct. In case you are not familiar with the financial service provider represented by an orange lion, ING Direct is the ING Group’s brand for a branchless direct bank with operations in a number of countries in Western Europe and North America. It offers services over the web, phone, ATM, or by mail. Operations in the United States began in 2000, and ING Direct is a member of the FDIC. It took me a few years to sign up, but I eventually did because their business plan allowed ING Direct to provide the most competitive saving rates that I could find. Namely, they reduced costs through branchless banking among other innovations. Although I did not have a huge amount to save, every penny by which my savings could grow larger mattered. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
Every fall, PopTech convenes an eclectic mix of thought leaders and visionaries in Camden, Maine. This year, Bhagwan Chowdhry (member, CFI’s Faculty Council) and Rosita Najmi (CFI Program Manager) will be among the 700+ who join the 15th annual celebration for the intellectually engaged. You can participate from your computer and for free via simulcast.
PopTech is a unique innovation network — a global community of cutting-edge leaders, thinkers, and doers from many different disciplines, who come together to explore the social impact of new technologies, the forces of change shaping our future, and new approaches to solving the world’s most significant challenges. PopTech is known for its thriving community of thought leaders, breakthrough innovation programs, visionary annual conferences, and deep media and storytelling capabilities.
PopTech’s mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world changing people, projects, and ideas. This is achieved by creating transformational experiences that showcase the ideas, trends, challenges and opportunities that are shaping the future. PopTech fosters breakthrough, multidisciplinary collaborations that help individuals, companies and organizations work together to change the world. Participating in PopTech offers a firsthand glimpse of the future, and a chance to influence innovation. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
The following is a continuation of an earlier blog post available here:
“Save Steady. Dream Huge.” is the tagline of San Francisco’s Kindergarten to College Program. Currently, students at nearly 40 schools (and by 2012 district-wide) automatically get a college savings account at Citibank, with an initial $50 deposit made possible by the City and County of San Francisco. The children and their families can make contributions to this deposit only account in person, by mail, or online as frequently as they like, in small or large quantities, up to $2,500 per year. Among other incentives to encourage savings is a match of the first $100 saved, and more incentives are forthcoming.
Once the student graduates from high school, s/he can apply the savings towards tuition, books, and other education-related expenses for (public or private) college, community college, graduate school, or other kinds of training programs. Foreign institutions may also be eligible. A public-private-partnership among the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, the Treasurer’s Office of Financial Empowerment, the Department of Children Youth and Families, the San Francisco Unified School District, EARN, CFED, the San Francisco Foundation, the New America Foundation and Stanford University created this head start to financial inclusion and savings.
The SallieMae Fund also has a similar program, which since 1992, has been building excitement about college in young students and already reached 70,000 students. Its Kids2College program seeks to “Open Doors to Higher Education” and starts with middle school students.
Such a head start to financial citizenship has capacity for significant long-term impact. As we wait for the conclusions and learning from the various ongoing efforts mentioned in a previous post, here are a few personal experiences that I imagine will be revealed among the studies and interventions.
A head start to financial citizenship can:
- Foster Dialogue: While conversations about money started with my mom and older siblings, they have expanded to dialogue with my friends, neighbors, parents of my friends, and now my husband. Money has become less of a taboo topic and instead, we share techniques and best-practices ranging from credit cards to taxes. Just as we would share recipes or restaurant reviews, we’ve exchanged stories about credit reports, IRAs, and student loan management. Each month, my husband and I hold budget meetings, where we review our numbers and progress towards our financial goals, responsibilities to our families, and opportunities of philanthropic giving.
- Encourage Planning: Knowing at a very young age that my parents not only lacked the financing to send me to college, but also that they would soon need an allowance of support from me spurred me to action and also managed my expectations. As a young child, I did not ask for toys and candy while waiting in line at the grocery store check-out. In middle school, I began participating in various competitions, whether speech or essay contests, to start raising money for college. In high school, I began applying for scholarships my sophomore year. Early planning and a future orientation enabled me to be (i) financially independent upon graduation from high school (ii) start sending money home at the completion of college and (iii) self-finance a year of volunteer work, my wedding, and down payment on an apartment. This would not have been possible without a head start.
- Practice Habits: I also think it made a difference for me to start my personal relationship with finance via savings instead of credit. In fact, it has resulted in an orientation toward credit, where I only considered it when necessary to finance graduate school and for a mortgage. Starting young allowed me to practice saving up toward a specific goal and instilled in me the time value of money which helps me overcome some of the biases that research in behavioral economics and the psychology of savings are revealing about barriers to saving. Starting early almost created the same affect—the same discipline—that many develop from debt.
- Enable Financial Competency: Finally, an early start enabled me to diversify the sources and types of financial education from which I benefitted. I recall attending workshops at my local library in Tennessee on budgeting; participating in webinars provided by some of the sources of my college scholarships regarding credit; reading books and blogs about investments; and joining workshops provided by my personal banks or the human resources and staff associations of my employers. Cumulatively and over time, I gained the knowledge and attitude towards financial competency. Each intervention provided new lessons, and I still have much to learn.
- Secure a Safe and High Quality Financial Passage: I think all of these experiences are like stamps in a financial passport. They each have contributed to my personal financial citizenship, and hopefully, they will enable me to create financial inclusion and opportunities for others, whether in my personal or professional capacities. These experiences also inform why I believe in initiatives like FAB (Financial Access at Birth), which aim to challenge the process, to make us think differently about whether financial citizenship can start at birth, and how interventions like financial education can ensure a safe and quality experience.
Image credit: ACCION International
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
While most people remember their first date, how many of us recall the first time we entered a bank? The two strongest memories of my initial visit were the bowl of lollipops behind the counter, and the confused look on the teller’s face when I asked with whom I should speak to open an account.
My first relationship with banking began in elementary school, during a visit to open an account for my single mother and our household of four children. My family came to the United States as religious refugees and had to navigate new systems and start our financial history from scratch— my mother’s credit history did not exactly transfer well from Iran. Although I only knew basic arithmetic and was still learning how to read from Ernie and Bert, my mother had few other choices, as no one at the local bank in rural East Tennessee could speak Persian, and my older siblings were at one of their numerous jobs, which provided income for our family during our initial years in our new life in America.
I was likely this bank’s youngest customer at the time, but it was not long before other clients who were not tall enough to reach the counter were registered among their books. I remember this initial meeting had quite a bit of back and forth between the bank agent speaking with my mother and me and the branch manager — the kind you experience when you’re negotiating the purchase of a car. He kept going in and out of the office, I assume to figure out how to proceed. In the end, despite not being his typical target audience, he came up with what was necessary to provide us access to finance.
Three decades later, I join other practitioners of development finance in asking questions about financial citizenship such as, “At what age can it start? When should it start? What are the best products and services?” Luckily, at least one donor and a number of international NGOs and financial service providers are interested in the answers. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Rosita Najmi
Credit Suisse is a strong believer in corporate social responsibility, and a key part of its strategy is the establishment of the Microfinance Capacity Building Initiative in 2007. This initiative seeks to strengthen microfinance institutions by investing in training structures and facilitating the flow of knowledge between microfinance institutions and the financial services industry. By combining charitable contributions with employee engagement, Credit Suisse fully invests its resources in building capacity and expanding the reach of microfinance institutions. Credit Suisse officially partners with four microfinance institutions, one of which is ACCION. Through this sponsorship, Credit Suisse became a proud founding sponsor of the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION. Credit Suisse also supports the establishment of training centers in India and China to provide training in credit methodology, program management, and best practices to staff at all levels.
In addition to sponsorships, Credit Suisse’s Microfinance Capacity Building Initiative mobilizes employees all across the bank to spread awareness of microfinance — educating one another and sharing knowledge. The Microfinance Advocates network was formed globally with regional steering committees in London, New York, and Singapore/Hong Kong and is now more than 500+ members strong, including an impressive pool of individuals to whom an opportunity to virtually volunteer with the Center was presented in the spring of 2011. Read the rest of this entry »
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