> Posted by Sarah Samuels, Operations Specialist, CFI
A few weeks ago, 70 financial inclusion leaders from around the globe made their way to Harvard Business School’s freshly blooming campus for the ninth annual HBS-Accion Program on Strategic Leadership in Inclusive Finance. This year’s class was a diverse group of financial service providers, investors, regulators, policymakers, risk managers, and technology innovators, bringing their vast experience from 35 countries. The program content mirrored the industry’s transition from a microfinance focus toward a broader financial inclusion and impact investing scope. Renowned professors Michael Chu and V. Kasturi Rangan, both senior affiliates of Harvard’s Social Enterprise Initiative, led the six-day course.
The week began with vigor, with the group engaged in a lively discussion on the case of Grupo Elektra, a Mexican retail and finance corporation that began offering financial services after first creating a consumer retail network. The case sparked a lively debate about whether social intention is necessary for social impact. Elektra has brought financial services to millions of Mexicans, but has never identified its purpose as social. Can it receive recognition as a social venture? The question of whether social and financial returns work together or whether they are at odds reappeared throughout the week. It was an undeniably controversial but important concept, and increasingly so as it’s nearly impossible to talk about poverty alleviation these days without impact investing coming into the conversation. One day of the course was focused on the role of impact investors and their investee companies, both within the financial sector and beyond.
As an observer of the course this year, I had the opportunity to see firsthand what hot-button issues prompted the most debate and disagreement. It is truly incredible how rich the quality of discussion is when you bring leaders from 35 different cultures together.
After the program, Eduardo Suescun from Finamerica in Colombia expressed my sentiment exactly, saying, “The program changes the way you think….it makes you think outside the building… It opens up your mind of how you see and prepare for the future.”
A collaborative industry-wide program such as this, built on case discussions gives us time to build and reflect on our work amidst a community of practitioners who make us question our beliefs and view challenges in a different light.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the HBS-Accion Program brings next year, but for now I’m excited to hear how participants changed as a result of this year’s course. After all, that is the purpose of a program like this, right? We actively learn, digest, and hopefully we’ve been inspired enough to apply what we learned when we return to the field.
Have you read?
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Dispatch from Harvard Business School — Relating Social and Financial Value
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May 17, 2014 at 10:18 am
John Gitau
Hi Sarah! Thank you for sharing with us the HBS-Accion 2014 group graduation. They look awesome in the photo!
Sarah, the only evidence that learning has taken place is behavior change. If such a formidable team is let to fizzle out, how shall we know they have learned something if they don’t share with us? How shall we monitor their behavior change? I have an idea. I ask CFI to lock them up(Accion can help in the arrest) in the CFI knowledge exchange chamber. To secure their release, they should each write a blog post on what they knew before the program, what they know now and how they intended to support financial inclusion with the new knowledge. After each has written a post( they can choose financial inclusion themes in line with what they studied) all the other 69 will support the writers in comments while we within the financial inclusion fraternity will give our contributions.
Once all of them have done that, they can be released and mandated to each be a writer/expert at CFI representing their countries and they will write on financial inclusion updates in their countries.
They will sign off as HBS-Accion 2014 as their group identity.
Come 2015 HBS-Accion program, 20 out of the 70 will be sponsored by Accion and CFI to go to HBS as guest experts to share with the 2015 team on how they applied their learning in their countries. The basis of selection to be guest speakers will be the intensity of their knowledge sharing at CFI.
After that experience as guest speakers, they will be nominated by Accion as their countries’ Financial inclusion Impact Evaluation ambassadeurs.
I am aware that the 70 are senior people in the industry and in the countries they come from and they might be too busy as to follow up on the program’s benefits evaluation. Fair enough because it will help HBS-ACCION evaluate the benefits of the program and perhaps think of how they could encourage a new crop of leaders to join the program especially with a bias towards value addition.
Finally Sarah, it is upon you to keep this group united, vibrant and useful to all of us. And we have an exciting forum that CFI is. It is too early to look forward to next year’s team even before you have introduced us to this team to demonstrate to us the financial inclusion prowess they have acquired from the apogee of learning- HBS.
I got to communicate with you at the onset of this program and found you just too organized and efficient! Before long, I discovered that that is the culture that invaded, captured and held the two institutions hostage for quite a while now, and you are not in a hurry to liberate yourselves into the free world of incompetence and apathy
May 19, 2014 at 11:45 am
Sandra Cavazos
Dear Sarah,
Thank you for your insights on the programa. I agree with Eduardo’s thoughts about this being a life-changing program.
Creating social impact is our responsability to strengthen the base of the pyramid; with high-quality financial products as well as programs that encourage personal development.
Thanks to HBS-ACCION Program for the opportunity to learn from the experiences of colleagues from around the world. Priceless!
May 19, 2014 at 12:22 pm
Samuel Deya
This particular forum is unique,special and require one to appreciate real professional humility with verifiable focus.
It is a question of putting forward the shared thoughts,experiences,perspectives among others in the form and manner the other participants would learn and internalize the same.
One gets to appreciate and internally interrogate himself/herself on the positive contributions made right from the village levels in deep undeveloped rural areas to our work stations even before the imagination of participating at such glorious global platform!
For the participants with the listening,caring,adoptive and ready mind to absorb the themes thereof, they are likely, if not bound to be real enablers in the positive transformation of our day to day thinking proactively for overall good of our society.
It is also noteworthy that the organizing team have ever put their acts together in terms of continued and sustained research on relevance and effectiveness on the themes pertaining to the program and same is normally well communicated before and after the event.
I have followed the program very meticulously since the year 2010 to date and whereas i have not participated in any so far ,i remain optimistic to be one of the participants during the subsequent ones beginning hopefully with the 2015 one.
Sam Deya