Can Financial Services Help the Poorest of the Poor?

Approximately 1 billion people live in extreme poverty, living on $1.25 or less per day. Their incomes are not only very low, but highly irregular. The poorest of the poor possess few assets, are disproportionately rural, geographically isolated and include members of socially excluded groups such as people with disabilities. In general, the extreme poor lack the qualities that even microcredit providers seek. Anne Hastings of Fonkoze Financial Services and Bill Abrams of Trickle Up will discuss their efforts to identify appropriate financial services that help the poorest of the poor. They will also share their findings from a pioneering pilot program to include the extreme poor into the formal financial system. Irena Shiba, Program Officer at the Citi Foundation, will moderate.

Response from Peter Burgess

The biggest single factor in socio-economic performance at the 'base of the pyramid' (BOP) is very low productivity. In most of the places where poverty is the worst, the productivity is much as it was pre-industrial and pre-agricultural revolution. Microfinance is a way to live with a little better quality of life at an abysmally low state of productivity. Microfinance does not address the economic productivity issue, the fundamental root cause of poverty

Things are arguably worse for poor people now than they were years ago simply because of population growth and the pressure of wealthy people and their industries to encroach on lands once available for poor people.

Date and time 26 Sep 2011 at 6:30pm - 8.00pm. Location Moody's Investors Service 7 World Trade Center at 250 Greenwich Street 20th Floor New York, NY 10012 Price Members/Moody employees: Free Non-members: $15

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