Stuart Rutherford

Financial Inclusion Expert

Trained originally as an architect, Stuart Rutherford later became interested in how poor people manage their money, and how they might be helped to do it better

Trained originally as an architect, Stuart Rutherford later became interested in how poor people manage their money, and how they might be helped to do it better. He has collected details of many financial devices in dozens of countries and has described them in his book The Poor and Their Money. With David Hulme of Manchester University, he devised and then led the first ‘financial diary’ research project, in Bangladesh in 1999. Results from the first crop of financial diary exercises were written up in Portfolios of the Poor, of which he is a co-author. Rutherford has also looked at money management for poor people from the point of view of a service provider, having established the MFI SafeSave in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1996, and has also worked as a teacher and consultant. He is married and now lives in Nagoya, Japan.

Posts by Stuart Rutherford

Innovative Approaches to Delivering Microfinance Services: The Case of VSSU, West Bengal

This report reviews the work of VSSU, a MFI in West Bengal and attempts to assess the opportunities and constraints of VSSU’s services and to their replication elsewhere

Use and Impact of Savings Services among the Poor in Tanzania

The report focuses on savings practices of poor people in Tanzania. It examines the perceived advantages and disadvantages of these particular savings services including the socio-economic characteristics of the people.

Use and Impact of Savings Services Among the Poor in Uganda

This report shares findings that improve knowledge and understanding of how poor people in Uganda save with the informal mechanisms like banks, moneylenders, pawnbrokers, money guards, deposit collectors, ROSCAs, ASCAs