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
- Ford Foundation $30 Million Investment Kick-starts Effort to Expand Low-Income Families’ Access to Financial Services in California Innovative merger strategy shores up credit unions serving families in underserved communities
- 2011: Furthering Our Commitment The foundation looks back on a year of social change
- Helping Low-Income American Families Build for the Future The Economist explores the challenges facing “unbanked” and “underbanked” households and the financial services that are being developed to serve their needs
- Confronting a Self-Perpetuating U.S. Wealth Gap Starting with some amount of financial wealth makes it easier to accumulate more
Regions
Team
What We're Following
- Lost Ground, 2011: Disparities in Mortgage Lending and Foreclosures Center for Responsible Lending examines 27 million mortgages, learning "the nation is not even halfway through the foreclosure crisis" and more.
- A Win-Win For All: Growth of Save to Win in Michigan Doorways to Dreams reports on the impact of "Prize-linked Savings" models, such as Save to Win, which are designed to motivate individuals to save by making it more fun.
- Reaching Underbanked Consumers Through Mobile Services Center for Financial Services Innovation's white paper argues that embracing mobile technologies could help financial service providers better serve the underbanked.
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