Women’s World Banking President and CEO Mary Ellen Iskenderian recently participated in a conversation with Steve Hollingsworth of Freedom from Hunger, moderated by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) fellow Isobel Coleman about how savings products can promote financial inclusion worldwide. A recording of the conversation can be found here.
Isobel blogged about the conversation on CFR’s website. Excerpt below:
Last month, I hosted Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking, and Steve Hollingworth, president and CEO of Freedom from Hunger, to discuss these issues as part of the Council on Foreign Relations’ ExxonMobil Women and Development Series. Our discussion touched on many topics related to financial inclusion, one of which was the important difference between microcredit and microfinance. In some situations, a loan might not be the financial tool an individual needs to climb out of poverty. The World Bank’s recently-published Global Financial Development Report 2014 similarly argues that providing credit indiscriminately can lead to financial and economic instability.
