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In the past few years, the world has woken up to microfinance and its potential to create widespread impact to the lives of the poor. The sector has attracted the interest of not just the development sector but also of mainstream financiers, large corporations and talented and skilled individuals. What makes microfinance such as an attractive opportunity is probably the fact it offers a unique opportunity for everyone to participate – it makes a difference to a certain segment within society that was hitherto excluded from benefitting from businesses of any kind – namely the poor. Microfinance has proved to be sustainable (in its short history of 30 odd years) and the lending model has seen remarkable scale. Its similarity to banking cannot be ignored including the ability to attract talent pool, ability to create value for long term investors and ultimately to create impact for the poor that it tries to serve.

The Srijan (creativity in English) Forum is a platform dedicated to the growth of the Indian microfinance industry. Organized since 2006, it has been a national level platform that has brought to the fore emerging and innovative business initiatives in the financial inclusion space. Most importantly it has also been extremely successful in bringing together prominent stakeholders within the industry to addresses and deliberates on issues and challenges that this sector faces.

Microfinance and Subprime - Is the Comparison Real? »

While microfinance practitioners in India may find the comparison bizarre, recent articles on the carpet bombing of small loans and the fear expressed by some European and US-based investors and observers that growth in Indian microfinance is creating a bubble has brought this topic up for discussion. The idea is not to give credence to the debate but to bring about the reality on whether subprime and microfinance can be compared.

Moderator:

Vineet Rai

 

Panelists:

Prashant Thakker (Standard Chartered)

Samit Ghosh (Ujjivan)

Suresh Gurumani (SKS Microfinance)

Nick O’Donohoe (JPMorgan)

Is Social Impact/Value Creation Key to Microfinance’s Commercial Success? »

Microfinance was a social activity that discovered commercial value as the sector evolved. The debate has been that Indian microfinance has started acquiring commercial tones. The accusation of being too commercial has stuck with Indian microfinance even though we have yet to see an exit. What has been very interesting, a pointer that was noticed in CGAP and Intellecap sponsored risk conference was that the pace of growth, the consequent scale and profitability is also making investors nervous some of who have starting looking at social as the real long term commercial value that microfinance embodies. The panel would discuss if on the ground the balance has started shifting and if so, why or what needs to be done to keep the equilibrium going? The panel shall bring forth divergent views on the social and commercial aspects of microfinance and if it is possible to bring the right social impact along with commercialization.

Moderator:

Wim van der Beek (Aavishkaar Goodwell)

 

Panelists:

Philip Vassiliou (Legatum)

Xavier Reille (CGAP)

Harinder Sawhney (JM Financial)

PN Vasudevan (Equitas) 



Building an Effective Ecosystem for Financial Inclusion – Are the Enablers in Place? »

The fact that penetration of financial services in India remains abysmal in most parts of the country, despite an ongoing debate on commercialization, clearly outlines the narrow view taken on microfinance and its outreach. Effectiveness of a microfinance organization goes up many notches if it has adequate support to implement partnerships that go beyond credit - here the role of regulators, technology providers, investors, insurance providers and corporates trying to reach out to new markets is critical. Microfinance Institutions seem to struggle in gaining the right comfort with the ecosystem; in taking microfinance beyond credit to holistic financial inclusion and the panel intends to find out why.

Moderator:

Ramesh Ramanathan (Janalaxmi Financial  Services) 

 

Panelists:

Henk Nijland (FMO)

Ulhas Deshpande (IntelleCash)

Dr. Prakash Bakshi (NABARD)

Representative, Reserve Bank of India (RBI)

Mathew Titus (Sa Dhan)