Financial Services for the Poor: Strategy Overview

This paper describes efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in developing opportunities to help the world’s poorest families lift themselves out of extreme poverty and hunger.

The foundation focuses on problems that have a major impact on people in the developing world, but get too little attention and funding. The foundation, together with its partners, is making progress in agricultural development, financial services for the poor, water, sanitation and hygiene, emergency relief and access to computers and the Internet. The foundations’ strategy mainly focuses on:

• Developing affordable and accessible savings products that meet the poor’s needs and budgets;
• Working with partners to support development of new, safe and affordable systems for delivering financial services to the poor;
• Guiding bank regulators in the developing world to make policies that support financial services for the poor and create a safe regulatory environment for the poor to access savings.

The foundation aims to help 50 million people in the developing world gain access to financial services by 2017, by creating viable new banking models for the poor.