Global Pandemic Meets Microfinance: Impact on Poor Households and What the Industry Needs to Do Now

This edition of faiVLive brings together expert practitioners and researchers to discuss how we should be thinking about the impact of COVID-19 and pandemic control policies on poor households in developing countries, what policy interventions are plausible and possible, what role does microfinance have to play, and what needs to happen to enable the global microfinance industry to be useful now and six months from now.

Speakers include:

• Greta Bull, CEO of CGAP and a director at the World Bank Group
• Deborah Burand, Professor of Clinical Law at NYU and the Co-Director of the Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship
• Shameran Abed, Senior Director, Microfinance and Ultra Poor Graduation Programs, BRAC
• Neville Crawley, CEO, Kiva
• Jonathan Morduch, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, NYU-Wagner, and a founder and Executive Director of the Financial Access Initiative
• Stuart Rutherford, Leader of the Hrishipara Financial Diaries; founder and Chairman of Bangladeshi financial services co-operative SafeSave

Moderator will be Timothy Ogden, Managing Director of the NYU Financial Access Initiative.