They may be minorities in their adopted countries, but diasporas have become a global economic force. They must be considered more than “migrants”. They must be served. How? By treating them as a unique client segment. It’s not just about remittances but about leveraging them; it’s about diaspora bonds, development back home and quality of life in the adopted home. It’s time to get creative and zero in on the unique banking needs and potential of diasporas.

Over the past 45 years, the number of people living outside their home country has almost tripled. In 2011, this 215 million-strong global diaspora sent home $350 billion, often in cash or via cash transmitters. What’s more, the World Bank estimates their savings at $400 billion. Through remittances, diaspora play a vital role in the development of their countries of origin, but now it’s time to combine the best of both worlds by harnessing not only their remittances but also their savings to drive development. How?

One way is for developing country governments to issue hard-currency bonds to diasporas, tapping into the wealth they’ve accumulated abroad. India, Israel, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Ethiopia have raised hard-currency financing from their respective diaspora. Securitising their future remittance receipts can raise lower costs and longer-term financing for infrastructure, public works and commercial development initiatives. Fedecrédito, a credit cooperative in El Salvador, is raising funds in this way in order to increase lending to underserved microentrepreneurs and low-income households.

So attend Congress Workshop II, “Diaspora banking: tapping into a global economic force”, on 10 May, and explore the rich potential of remittance securitisation and diaspora bonds. With a number of developing countries possibly launching development-financing diaspora bonds in the near future, and given the immensity of diaspora savings and the business case for tapping them, this workshop is sure to generate a lot of buzz at the Congress.

Don’t miss out! Register now at www.wsbi2012.com, where you can find all Congress-related information, then log on to our blog next week for the fifth in our series of posts on the WSBI Congress: an inside look at Workshop III: “Fuel for the real economy: access to finance for SMEs”.

Follow us and our preparations for the WSBI Congress not only on our blog but also on LinkedIn (http://linkd.in/wBGBW3), Facebook (http://on.fb.me/wUYrZ6) and Twitter (@WSBI_Brussels).

Customer protection isn’t – or certainly shouldn’t be – confined to mere deposit guarantee schemes, which are useful only when the patient is already on the operating table. In the post-financial crisis world, protecting savers, investors and borrowers, and doing so across the board, is paramount, and for that regulators are finding even a variety of early warning systems, pertaining to a broad range of customer protection efforts, insufficient.

So they are regulating like never before, going far beyond mere deposit guarantee schemes, in an effort to protect the customer directly and indirectly. Sweeping regulations on financial instruments, financial advice, mortgage credit, market abuse – a virtual regulatory onslaught. We need to stop problems before they start, to be sure, but can regulation really do this? Even if it can, can it do so without hindering the banking business?

First things first. What regulation already exists? Is it efficient, and can banks comply with it and prosper? Where is the thin line between providing information and conducting a sales pitch? How can we adapt the product to each client’s specific situation, needs, risks and aspirations, and still maintain profitability? And what’s the emergency number to dial when accidents happen?

Attend Congress Workshop 1, “The best of both worlds: customer protection and profitability”, on 10 May, and learn not only how to comply with customer protection requirements but how to do so in a way that maximises your bottom line. With a panel discussion featuring, among others, Adam Farkas, the first Executive Director of the European Banking Authority, and Sebastian Schich, Principal Economist for Financial Affairs in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Register now at www.wsbi2012.com, where you can find all Congress-related information, then log on to our blog next week for the fourth in our series of posts on the WSBI Congress: an inside look at Workshop 2: “Diaspora banking: tapping into a global economic force”.

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Retail banking is probably the simplest form of banking. All you need to do is convince savers to deposit money in your bank and lend it to borrowers at a higher rate. As long as the savers trust the bank, the borrowers pay their loans back, and the bank doesn’t try to shoot for the moon, the system can work forever. Or can it? Recent events have shown that sometimes savers panic and rush for the exits, gutting a bank’s liquidity and taking it down; borrowers can go on shopping sprees and become unable to pay their loans back, wreaking major havoc; and banks sometimes do indeed try to shoot for the moon, aiming for unrealistic profits.

To avoid all this from happening (again), regulators have dreamt up a regulatory package that will be hard for banks to swallow, even for institutions with the human and financial resources to cope with a regulatory burden. Will a banking sector that has contributed for decades to a safer and more diversified financial sector be brought down by the combination of financial crises and the regulatory responses to them?

Find out. Get involved. Say your piece. And get results. Attend Plenary Session 1, “The retail bank: rock solid and right around the corner”, on 10 May, and come away with fresh ideas and strategies to build on a rock solid business model. With speaker Joaquin Almunia, European Commissioner; moderator José Antonio Olavarrieta, WSBI President; and panellists José-Maria Mendéz, Director-General, CECA; Camden Fine, Chairman and CEO, ICBA; and Giovanni Manghetti, Chairman of Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra Spa.

Register now at www.wsbi2012.com, then log on to our blog next week for an inside look at Congress Workshop I: “The best of both worlds: customer protection and profitability”.

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In today’s world, with the acceleration of just about everything, from the vibrations of your sonic toothbrush to the apps on your smartphone, three years can seem to encompass an entire era. This is why the WSBI Congress is so important. Held once every few years since 1924, it has become the seminal event in every step of the savings and retail banking industry’s development. Since the last Congress in 2009, the world has reeled from the second greatest financial and economic crisis it has ever known, and a tsunami of regulation has been closing in on the banking industry’s shores. Technology has turned the stuff of science fiction into the yawningly quotidian. Customer behaviour, thanks in large part to technological advances, is changing drastically and forcing business to adapt. And most people, even those who have the slightest experience of banking – and even some who have none – have grown only more suspicious of banks. That last fact is probably the most important reason why you should attend the 23rd WSBI Congress.

Trust has never been more crucial to banking relationships, and it’s up to banks to figure out how to restore it. Potential clients are searching for institutions that know, talk and listen to them, and that understand the environment in which they live and work. They also seek banking partners that contribute to the local economy and support customers whether times are good or bad. Now more than ever, society demands that businesses, including banks, act responsibly and offer genuinely sustainable solutions that serve the interests of people and the planet.

Banks have to make the business case for meeting these demands, but in a way the demands themselves make the case. Born out of crisis, they are the demands of a society that sees financial cohesion as integral to its own cohesion. Simply put, if banks don’t provide it, then there is no business case for banks. Which suggests the nature of business, and the banking business above all, has to change.

If banks are going to do business at all, they need people who will do business with them, but consecutive crises have convinced many that the last thing they need is a bank. They’re right. People don’t need banks. They need good banks. Banks that tend to their financial health. Banks that are good for them.

Organised in collaboration with WSBI Moroccan members Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion and Al Barid Bank (Poste Maroc), the 2012 WSBI Congress, “GOOD FOR YOU – The savings and retail banking model”, will examine the value and business that the savings and retail banking model brings to its wide range of stakeholders, even in a retail banking landscape still recovering from the global financial crisis. Participants will learn how the socially committed retail bank can make its business case. In addition to providing affordable and sustainable accounts and lending wisely to the real economy, banks must tap the potential of growing markets: the abundance of remittances; low-income earners hungry for a safe place to put their hard-earned cash; mobile money and innovative payments technology; and rapidly changing economies requiring the stewardship of banks that anticipate needs and accompany people and businesses whose societies are changing no less rapidly.

A bank’s role in building a socially healthy community is to make sure its customers are financially healthy. A banking sector’s role, meanwhile, is to safeguard that health by stabilising and adding diversity to the entire financial system. Savings and socially committed retail banks can do both, but the challenge has never been so daunting – not least because of potentially stifling regulation and structural transformation. The retail banking model can meet this challenge, just as it met the challenge of the financial crisis, proving its resilience and rock solid foundation. But in an era when big bank failures have overshadowed the entire industry, bankers of all stripes, even savings and retail bankers, must prove themselves anew again and again, and even reinvent themselves. Congress participants will find out how.

Register now at www.wsbi2012.com, and log on to our blog next week for an inside look at Congress Plenary Session 1: “The retail bank: rock solid and right around the corner”.

Follow us and our preparations for the WSBI Congress on LinkedIn (http://linkd.in/wBGBW3), Facebook (http://on.fb.me/wUYrZ6) and Twitter (@WSBI_Brussels).

• To formulate a comprehensive, long term industrial policy for payments,
• To move away from systematic, ex ante legislation,
• To grant an e.g. 5 year legislation holiday, allowing for the massive legislative disruption of the past 10 years to be assimilated and produce its effects,
• To tone down any public support of cash, and its acceptance as payment instrument by public administrations and related entities,
• To reassess the market situation in 2017.

These are the findings of an ESBG Working Paper (“SEPA or payments innovation: a policy and business dilemma”) that compares policy makers and legislators approaches to payments innovation in the European Union, United States, Canada and Australia, reviews recent academic research as to how payments innovation happens, as well as a set of both demand and supply sides market studies, and a sample of payment innovations announced worldwide over a year. This ESBG Working Paper is available via the following link: http://www.esbg.eu/uploadedFiles/Position_papers/Sepa_or_payments_innovation_a_policy_and_business_dilemma.pdf

Over the past 45 years, the number of people living outside their home country has almost tripled. In 2011, this 215 million-strong global diaspora sent home $350 billion, often in cash or via cash transmitters. What’s more, the World Bank estimates their savings at $400 billion. Through remittances, diaspora play a vital role in the development of their countries of origin, but now it’s time to combine the best of both worlds by harnessing not only their remittances but also their savings to drive development. How?

One way is for developing country governments to issue hard-currency bonds to diasporas, tapping into the wealth they’ve accumulated abroad. “Milking migrants” is what The Economist calls it: diaspora bonds appeal to migrant patriotism and pride, and provide a means for them to contribute to the development of their home country. Israel was the first to issue such bonds, in 1951, and in the last two decades India, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Ethiopia have also raised hard-currency financing from their respective diaspora. Securitising their future remittance receipts can raise lower cost and longer-term financing for infrastructure, public works, and commercial development initiatives. Fedecredito, a credit cooperative in El Salvador, is raising funds in this way in order to increase lending to underserved microentrepreneurs and low-income households.

Diaspora bonds are not yet widely used as a development financing instrument, but with Nigeria, Kenya and the Philippines possibly launching such projects in the near future, and given the immensity of diaspora savings and the business case for tapping them, their time has come.

Don’t miss the opportunity to explore the rich potential of remittance securitisation and diaspora bonds at the “Leveraging remittances for development” workshop at the WSBI Congress. Register now at www.wsbi2012.com.

Lee GILLETTE
WSBI

First, a serendipitous encounter: Your WSBI-ESBG correspondent, though intrepid, was dozing in the train when he overheard the man next to him say into his cell phone, “Either they break apart or it becomes the Euro-mark.”

Your correspondent, roused, asked the stranger, “Do you really believe that?”

Dr Johan Van Overtveldt, former professor of economics at the University of Antwerp, author of the prescient The End of the Euro and currently Editor-in-Chief of both Trends and Knack magazines, and on his way to brief some heavy hitters in London, looked as though he thought your correspondent still believed in Santa Claus. “Look at the proposal yesterday between Sarkozy and Merkel,” he said. “Behave badly and you’ll get sanctioned – but the sanctions mean nothing, because in the end you can avoid them easily. It has no teeth.” He continued to take me to school over coffee at St. Pancras Station. “Over the centuries there have always been attempts at economic and monetary union in Europe. We’ve come together and drifted apart before. In 1910 such a degree of growth and integration – today we call it globalisation – had been achieved that the commentators of the day said no one should do anything differently, no leaders should mess with the status quo. Well, you know what happened over the next fifty years.”

He added, “You know the Dutch never destroyed their guilders?”

On that uplifting note, your correspondent went off to the Centre for the Study of Financial Inclusion roundtable, moderated by CSFI Director Andrew Hilton, on a subject that, in light of the morning’s apocalyptic conversation, seemed a slightly less urgent concern, but was nevertheless right up WSBI-ESBG’s alley: “How to promote a savings culture in an age of austerity”.

CSFI Co-Director Jane Fuller, who spent 18 years at the Financial Times, launched the debate. She’d served on a “Future Prosperity Panel” convened by Aviva, a leading provider of life and pension products in Europe, which resulted in the report Big picture thinking – towards sustainable savings, with analysis and editing by The Economist Intelligence Unit (http://www.aviva.com/library/pdfs/fpp/Aviva_Future_Prosperity%20-%20FINAL%20REPORT.pdf).

“Savings got a bad name,” Jane said, “and the climate for savings has gotten worse.” Debt reduction, austerity measures, falling wages, inflation have all conspired to complicate the savings rationale. She added, “People tell me, ‘You must be mad to preach savings’.” What’s more, it takes a lot to sustain what seems a bare bones service, or as Andrew Hilton put it, “It’s a Dolly Parton thing: ‘You don’t know how much it costs to look this cheap’.”

Sam White, Aviva’s Global Public Policy Director and former special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, “We need more private savings because public welfare is unsustainable. Governments make huge promises to their populations that can’t be delivered.” Savings did increase in the UK during the initial financial and economic crises, he said, but over the next five years it will fall from 9% to 6% and household debt will increase by £480 billion. “Potential savers need to know what saving will mean to their lives – if I do it, where will I end up?” He touted Aviva’s “Magic Money” campaign (http://www.aviva.co.uk/media-centre/story/14475/aviva-launches-magic-money-social-media-campaign/), which encourages younger workers to save for the future.

Several sceptics had a seat at the table. (This was England.) In fact, Royal Bank of Scotland representatives were veritably libertarian: “saving”, one said, is essentially useless when the “government takes savings from savers and gives it to those who don’t. It’s wealth accumulation and preservation that are important.” Jane Fuller shot back, “That’s the definition we’re using,” and while the gentlemen from RBS fell momentarily silent, they appeared unconvinced.

The presence of Ros Altman, the Director General of the UK’s Saga Group, which caters to the over-50s, made your correspondent wonder, Are we here to talk about promoting a savings culture, or pensions? An economist, investment banker, London School of Economics Governor, and one-time adviser to 10 Downing Street, Ros claimed, “We’ve destroyed retirement and savings culture. Government’s answer for growth was to encourage borrowing when it should have been encouraging saving. The system conspired to put people off saving and to borrow. Policy was based on silently stealing savers’ assets and transferring them to borrowers. And policy is obsessed with pensions as a form of savings. A pension parts people from their money: they give it up early in life and don’t get it back – if they get it back – until late.” From what Ros was saying, your correspondent didn’t gather much about “promoting savings” as WSBI-ESBG might define it, but she is on record as calling “irresponsible” Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Charlie Bean’s call for people to spend rather than save.

Next, Bruce Davis, a Hugh Grant doppelganger, explained Abundance Generation (http://abundancegeneration.com), the first community investment platform that makes it possible for people to earn a cash return by investing in renewable energy farms in the UK. Your correspondent, again bewildered, wondered, Where’s the ‘savings culture’ talk, man? The RBS gentlemen, meanwhile, reared their heads again: “What’s the difference between investing in wind farms and investing in venture capital?” A warm, fuzzy feeling? your correspondent thought. Bruce answered, “Money is about doing stuff, not getting stuff.” Apparently this is because money is no longer about saving. “Where do you put your money if you’re not a risk taker? The dearth of choice means you either keep it in cash or you have to put it somewhere you really don’t trust. People need things to put their money into, and they need to do it themselves.” He calls it “Democratic Finance”: greater ownership and more control over the way they invest their money.

Much more a propos to the conversation as it was unfolding, a young researcher intervened: “Seventy-five per cent of UK young adults no longer believe in retirement. Seventy-five per cent!” That is, they have accepted that they will get nothing when they reach the dog-walking years. Save? these youths ask. Why bother?

“So, what do they plan to do,” a mature banker responded, “work till they drop dead?”

The young researcher deadpanned, “They expect to be unemployed.” The mature banker said no more.

It wasn’t all bad. The middle-aged, for example, are among those who are thinking about retirement. “They’re thinking,” Bruce said, “that retirement is no longer about walking the dog. It’s about being able to walk.”

Even the normally unflummoxable moderator Andrew Hilton was flummoxed by the debate.“That went off in about three different directions,” he told your correspondent, to whom the meeting seemed to be about finding other means to save than saving, because, at least to this particular roundtable, saving is no longer considered safe.

Why is that? Your correspondent, with his acute sense of the obvious, wondered in the train back to Brussels. He assumes it’s because older generations have seen what’s happened to their so-called savings, which has taught younger generations not to bother saving at all. Thus the roundtable didn’t propose “How to promote a savings culture in an age of austerity”. Instead, it seemed to be asking, “What to promote when saving is no longer considered safe?”

But where did so many among the older generations put their savings? Into derivatives, stocks and bonds, into houses built on sub-primes, into sub-primes built on sub-primes, into sub-primes themselves, into investments handled by the likes of Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers – in other words, they put them into what they probably thought of as one or several forms of a private pension. Is that the “savings culture” WSBI and ESBG are talking about?

No. Saving, real saving, is safe! Excuse your correspondent’s outburst, but he can be cordial no longer. Remember: “Where do you put your money if you’re not a risk taker?” Bruce Davis asked rhetorically at the roundtable, then answered, “People need things to put their money into.” But they do have things. They’re called “banks”. Investment banks? Shadow banks? Virtual banks? No! Real banks: savings and retail banks. They didn’t squander their clients’ savings, they didn’t skimp on loans to SMEs and the real economy, they didn’t falter like the megabanks did during the financial crisis. If you really want to save and you’re not a risk taker, look no further. Rock solid and right around the corner, savings and retail banks offer what other banks can’t: real banking for real people.

Intrepidly,

Your WSBI-ESBG correspondent

Promoting financial services to the poor

 The infrastructure and resources required to implement this programme faced a broad spectrum of challenges and risks. These included the design and development of a marketing scheme able to promote and introduce e-mobile banking and a POS savings card product while providing a smooth delivery mechanism through the medium of the country’s local postal agencies.

 Over time and in the course of the consultant’s field mission at selected postal agencies, it became apparent that several challenges and marketing issues emerged that need to be addressed and that managing this risk must be a high priority for the programme’s success.

Promoting financial services to the poor

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as “the strategies and tactics used to identify, create and maintain satisfying relationships with customers that result in value for both the customer and the marketer”.

Marketing is a “continuing” process which must align both the marketers’ and the customers’ interests. Marketing is not just a selling and “one-effort” promotional campaign. It requires ongoing investment with the aim to promote, encourage and attract its focus clientele into the mainstream of financial services through the current local postal agencies and other non-financial intermediaries.

 As was evident, a marketing-mix based on the “five+2” principles of marketing needs to be applied in a consistent form. The “five+2” principles are: product, price, promotion, place, people and – last but most critical – the “+2” of process management and physical link.

During the course of my various field mission visits, it became obvious that most of the “five Ps” were covered to some degree, however, several challenges remained with respect to understanding the linkage and inter-relationships between the “+2”. Most service industries face a challenge in correlating improved process management to financial performance, marketing and operational risks.

Promoting financial services to the poor

 The whole marketing effort and investment to date has proved that in the initial stages customer attraction tends to be high, but it rapidly tapers off after this phase as each of the bank’s staff are less involved in the recruitment and signing up of clients. Postal employees’ interest in continuing this marketing effort also diminishes without continuing and active bank support. Another weakness at the postal agencies was the lack of a (financial) linkage between the product sold and the individual postal agent’s remuneration to incentivise continuing business development activities. In this situation, it becomes obvious that regular market and postal or agent sensitisation is needed to stimulate client interest. Constant product promotional activities are imperative during the product lifetime.

Any new product launch needs nurturing. One of the biggest risk enhancers is to turn a new product loose on the world too soon, stripping away its support and attention. The “swim or forget” attitude is risky. A product launch requires an ongoing sustainable marketing plan and must be integrated into the bank’s management process. It must be well focused, consistent and regularly monitored to ensure that the plan and delivery mechanism, via postal and other non-financial agents, attain the required strategic goals.

Failure to integrate and maintain a product “life cycle” support mechanism increases both financial and operational risks faced by these institutions, as the manpower, investment, cost structure and marketing efforts invested to date will not meet the objectives established by each of these programmes in the number of clients, accounts and targets to reach the unbanked rural and urban populations by 2014.

It must also be noted that any product launch has a finite life cycle. Products don’t often stay at the top for long. What usually happens is that they follow a life cycle, from introduction to the point where they are overtaken by newer, better alternatives. If you understand where your product is in its life cycle, you can market it in a way that will maximise sales.

 Success in minimising operational risks via process change is not so much about methods and tools as it is about having a compelling case for ongoing executive involvement and collaboration (product and client reach), customer-centric measurements, a smooth marketing transition from design to implementation and promotion, and an infrastructure for continuous and ongoing improvement, sustainability and client capture. When you introduce a product, for example, you need to invest in promotion to build awareness and target your marketing at people who influence others to buy.

From my field missions, one lesson I extracted is that marketing activity and promotion must be well crafted to separate you from your competition in the minds of your potential customers. To do that, promotion must be a continuing process management effort and include the union of product, price, packaging and place into a single message that will make your product stand out in the marketplace.

Overall, my current field mission indicates that both organisations’ marketing risk management is in the process of reassessment to align it better to their strategic objectives. This will require making changes to their strategies and execution processes, significantly improving the process of communicating to its targeted clientele, and initiating more active participation of the front-line postal agents in both promoting e-banking and laying the ground work for the introduction of a savings card product through POS terminals.

In conclusion, a successful marketing initiative requires a disciplined process management approach which takes into consideration the “five+2 P’s” principle, including Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that track how marketing objectives help meet the business objectives of TPB & TPC.

Jorge Iwaszkiewicz

Jorge Iwaszkiewicz is an operational risk expert that has been working closely with WSBI for the past two years on the doubling savings account programme.

In 2009, Tanzania Postal Bank (TPB) took up the challenge of improving financial inclusion amongst the rural poor, by joining the WSBI Doubling Savings Accounts Programme.

One of the main challenges for banks aiming to provide accessible and cheap financial services to the rural poor is to come up with a sustainable business model. However, working on a business plan is just the first step. Major challenges are also often imposed by local regulators. Sometimes, complicated, bureaucratic or overly strict rules impede the successful development of an innovative business model that would contribute to the achievement of financial inclusion in underserved rural areas and therefore contribute to the country’s economic development. In particular, regulators are slow in adapting rules to technological advances. 

Tanzania Postbank branch line

The use of mobile phone technology based on a network of retail shops appears to be a promising method of achieving financial inclusion in rural areas. The key aim is to avoid opening expensive and unsustainable bank branches in rural areas. People living in underserved areas do not want to spend hours travelling to the bank branch. They want an easily accessible service. Implementing this technology will enable people to transfer  money simply by using their mobile phone. Retail shops play a key role in this process. Local supermarkets and shops, which are in partnership with the bank and from which they receive proper training, will serve the clients to enable them to withdraw money.  

In Tanzania, achieving financial inclusion is receiving urgent attention. In rural areas low population density hinders traditional bank branches from becoming sustainable. The high  costs of brick-and-mortar outlets cannot be covered by a small client base that only transacts in small amounts and only occasionally. The difficulty of setting up service points in sparsely populated rural areas is the reason why only 9% of the adult population in Tanzania uses formal financial services. Even the semi-formal financial sector (MFIs and SACCOs) reaches only 3% of the population. In total, 54% of Tanzanian adults are financially excluded and do not use either formal or informal financial products.

These percentages suggest TPB’s challenge is worth taking up. Access to financial services is an essential prerequisite to sound and sustainable economic development and to the personal and financial empowerment of individuals. To increase proximity to target clients  TPB has already set up its mobile banking platform and joined forces with the Post Office to reach outside of cities. Since October 2011, TPB has rolled out its mobile banking services to 137 postal outlets all over the country. However, more needs to be done to  increase rural outreach. Concerned about the risks, regulators in some sub-Saharan countries have opposed allowing non-regulated agents to accept customer deposits.

Post Office

On 5 August, after several meetings with the Tanzanian Central Bank, TPB succeeded in pushing back against inappropriate regulation, by providing strong, concrete examples that the project is safe and that risks are manageable. TPB received permission to set up service points beyond the Post Office. This is a big step forward for TPB in the achievement of their project goals and their mission to achieve financial inclusion amongst the rural poor.

In the publication regarding the first lessons learnt about the “Doubling Savings Accounts programme” amongst the poor, we pointed to the need for banks to become more assertive in their negotiations with regulators. The Tanzania experience can serve as an example for other WSBI members  facing similar obstacles. The Tanzanian success shows that with proactive dialogue regulators can be reassured of the safety of innovative business models. Will other countries also be able to convince their regulators and move forward with the implementation of non-postal and non-bank service points? The answer to this question will determine the financial situation of thousands of poor people. 

Lisa Stahl
Project Manager for the Doubling Savings Accounts Programme