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The microfinance industry has traditionally seen poor people’s needs for financial services only as “credit for enterprise”. However, due to their various life cycle needs, low income clients need a range of “financial services” and not just the traditional mono-product of working capital loan. In response to this emerging need of the sector, growing numbers of financial institutions are developing and delivering a range of financial services customised to cater to client needs. This paper examines some of the products designed (many in collaboration with MicroSave) as a respond to these needs, as well as some of the innovative delivery processes currently under testing. It also reviews the MicroSave approach to product design. It concludes with comments on NABARD’s Kisan Credit Card and implications of the changing face of microfinance for the “massification” of financial services for the low income market in India.

This paper is a synthesis of a series of findings of MicroSave market research studies on how low-income individuals and small or microentrepreneurs transfer money and make payments in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, the three countries comprising the East African Community (EAC). It analyses the reasons for sending money and the regulated services and other ways available to transfer money on the basis of interviews with microfinance clients as users and banks and other service providers in all three countries. Combining their perspectives with complementary research, the paper identifies gaps and weaknesses in the existing money transfer services. These gaps offer a market opportunity for new or different services, including the potential for services by microfinance institutions (MFIs)

It examines the demand for risk management tools by the poor and gathers experience of seven institutions providing microinsurance to satisfy this demand in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania

The paper discusses the benefits of offering savings services to the poor, while cautioning that there are no magic formulas for designing appropriate savings products for poor people

This research paper seeks to explore the options left to clients in the absence of user-owned and managed MFIs, and the clients’ perceptions and attitudes towards this possibility.

This study shows the importance of savings for smoothing out peaks and troughs in income and expenditure in Zambia