Improving Access To Financial Services
Overview
The goal of this work is to improve access to and the infrastructure for innovative financial products and services for low-income people.
The Challenge
In the United States, an estimated 9 million households do not have a savings or a checking account while another 21 million households have bank accounts but rely on costly alternative financial service providers such as payday lenders or check-cashing outlets. In developing countries, approximately 72 percent of adults lack access to the formal financial system.
Mainstream financial markets fail to meet the needs of poor and marginalized populations for three reasons: the financial products and services offered typically are inappropriate for low-income households; the infrastructure or delivery system is unresponsive to their needs; and the policies and regulatory system are poorly designed and implemented.
What We're Doing
Improving access to affordable and responsive financial products and services is an important step to help poor and low-income households build and maintain assets.
In the United States, we support:
- Efforts to increase access to quality financial services by funding research to test innovative products that meet the needs of poor households
- Building an infrastructure to make these products and services widely available
- Funding advocacy for supportive policy and regulation
Globally, our work focuses on helping financial institutions serve poor households by:
- Helping microfinance institutions to develop social performance management (SPM) systems that improve their ability to serve poor and low-income people
- Strengthening the capacity of financial institutions to use SPM systems
- Identifying new ways to reach very poor households
Learn more about how our strategies and approaches shape our grant making.
From the Newsroom
- Microfinance Industry Takes Action To Report Client Poverty Levels, Changes to Clients' Lives 2010 Social Performance Reporting Awards launched, recognizing the commitment of microfinance institutions to transparency
- Social Performance Reporting in Microfinance Honoring the microfinance institutions most transparent and accountable about providing financial services to the poor
- How to Promote Savings? The Humble Savings Bond is Part of the Answer Ford grantee's promising new idea to build wealth for low-income families gets the attention of the federal government
Regions
Team
What We're Following
- Paying More for the American Dream Report on inequalities within the housing finance system and its affect on communities of color 481 KB
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