I see banks from six parameters that characterize them: 1. Financial services 2. Customers 3. Law. 4. Tools. 5. Systems. 6. Profits. In a statement, ” banks are financial institutions that offer financial products to customers in a legal way using systems and tools with an objective of making profits for their owners”.

Out of the 6 areas, your post posits that they need to change their systems and tools to serve new set of customers.

My take is as follows:

1. Banks are not interested in the financial inclusion we are talking up to them. Listen to their studious silence in this debate. Which bank CEOs contribute thoughts or ideas in our space? Their associations leadership don’t openly and generously participate in our debate. They just tell us where they were, what they concluded and where they would meet next. It is up to us to read their recommendations with no room to ask questions. At times we wish they could say more. Are we sure that one day the banks will not ask us hard questions such as ” who told you we wanted your poor junk as our customers? Who are you to define customers to us? Do you think we are incapable of getting customers we want and when we want them? Get lost!” Come to think of it, who are we in the financial inclusion working for? Why are we pushing the poor down the banks’ throat while the same poor are trying to wriggle themselves from our grip shouting ” leave us alone with our savings, shylocks and ROSCA?”

2. Banks listen to nobody else except their regulators who are their advocates anyway and that is why consumer protection is the poors’ redemption song falling on deaf ears. Look at the annual billions that banks make in profits even in depressed economies. Do such figures talk of consumers’ welfare? They see advocates of consumer protection as skeletons in the feast. Don’t forget regulators are bankers to governments. So, who do regulators report to? Aren’t they a power unto themselves? Nobody wants to relinquish financial power monopoly. The poor being brought to the banks means more scrutiny and a mess to the party. The few banks adhering to consumer protection are just throwing bones to be chewed on as they enjoy the meat. We should not be misled into believing their sincerity.

3. Beth, you say the truth. that ” the new customers are economically vulnerable with relatively low level of education and they may be more comfortable operating in the informal sector”. Knowing that, why are we pushing them to banks while they are comfortable wherever they are? They haven’t told us they want to change. We in the financial inclusion field are not poor and if the poor have not asked us to get them formal financial services, is our effort based on altruism or self interest?. Do we sincerely believe deep in ourselves that banks are the best custodians of the poor? Are we so satisfied with banking services that we feel patriotic to recommend the poor to such great services or do we want to get more numbers so that we feel more solace since there is consolation in numbers? Aren’t we embarrassing ourselves between haughty and un-interested banks and “the-unwilling- to- go- to- the- slaughterhouse- poor? Has the governments sent us to do some work for them of recruiting the poor into the formal financial services?

4. I am laughing at the humour of regulators saying they lack the tools to study the poor potential customers. Which tools? Is it that they don’t have money to acquire tools or they don’t know how to get professionals to craft the tools they want? Has any of them visited MicroSave the global supermarket for financial sector tools? What a lame excuse. Can we buy that?

5. Regulators, even from their own action and lethargy have demonstrated their desire to serve the clients they understand- “the manageable number of larger institutions than a proliferation of small providers”. Who are we to tell them otherwise if they already have made up their minds?

Because banks or their regulators have not asked us to recruit customers for them, and the poor have shown their unwillingness to go formal, whose agenda are we in the financial inclusion pushing? If we are advocates of the poor, we should be busy helping them improve their informal financial operations and help them come up as a second tier financial sector.

Indeed, if I were bank, I will not care about the fragmented poor small account holders who are not only hard work to acquire but a nightmare to manage. Why should I if I am making good profits from my deliberately selected customers- the employed and business owners who give me all the money I need in ledger fees, commissions and loans? I would arrogantly say ” Helping the poor? my foot, that is the work of the government. Mine is to make profits and pay taxes and if the government is unable to allocate the money well to the poor, I should not be blamed or be forced to take clients I don’t desire. And by the way, these people I hear every morning by the roadside shouting about financial inclusion, who are they? Tell them to take their customers elsewhere, I am not interested. Who are they to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do around technology and innovation? And with that, I will go to the boardroom and announce the financial results of the year with pomp!