Graham Seel Principal Consultant at BankTech Consulting
There has been plenty of discussion in recent years about the effectiveness of linking informal Savings Groups with formal Financial Service Providers. Some people will tell you that they are very effective in expanding the capabilities of savings groups to further benefit economic growth in the community. Others will tell you that SGs and FSPs ha...
16 July 2019 /inclusion Financial Inclusion
Technology is essential if linkage is to work for savings group members and for banks. But what technology? A soon-to-be-published report for World Renew documents my research on Savings Group linkages to FSPs. One of the areas I explore is the role of technology in creating sustainable, profitable and effective linkage. Technology to Redu...
27 April 2018 /inclusion Financial Inclusion
The simple answer: Savings Groups plus access to a formal Financial Services Provider (FSP). Sometimes! A soon-to-be-published report for World Renew documents my research on Savings Group linkages to FSPs. The key question is whether, when and how to link Savings Groups (such as the CARE Village Savings and Loan model) to formal providers like ban...
21 April 2018 /inclusion Financial Inclusion
Financial Inclusion efforts for the world’s poorest people have particularly focused on urban areas, and have had some success. But there is a tremendous relatively untapped opportunity for the formal financial sector to extend their reach to the rural poor. Millions people have joined informal savings groups in 75+ countries, with estimates r...
13 January 2018 /inclusion Financial Inclusion
OK for most of us this sounds crazy. Cash management is a commodity. All the big banks do it. All the small banks offer it, even if they have to outsource it. Companies need it but there’s nothing new under the sun. Right? Wrong! Business banking is going to change. Today banks are primarily used as ways to carry out financial transactions. But in ...
10 February 2017 /wholesale Innovation in Financial Services
There is more hype, discussion and disagreement about Blockchain than any other technology impacting financial services today. There has been a lot written about blockchain (or more generally Digital Ledger Technology). There are some good tutorials on what it is. The news media seem to always have some new application that is in pilot. All the la...
09 January 2017 Innovation in Financial Services
Because of increasing competition, and low interest rates, net interest income is going down. This isn’t what our shareholders and members want. But what can we do about it? In a previous post, I listed a number of significant challenges and opportunities for community banks. In this, and following posts, I will dig a bit deeper into innovative ap...
09 November 2016 /retail Innovation in Financial Services
Community banks need to innovate. Most of us accept that. Too much is changing around us, too many other players are jumping on our turf. Regulators seem out to strangle us. And customers demand more and more. Community banks need to be strategic and tactical about innovation. Innovation should be driven by corporate strategy. It should be carried...
17 October 2016 /retail Innovation in Financial Services
Banks are dependent upon models of all kinds. This is because reality is much too complex for us to understand well enough for perfect predictions of the future. Models are used as a simplification of reality. The problem is that this introduces uncertainty, which means risk. Regulators are very concerned about model risk. They require that banks ...
13 October 2016 /regulation Innovation in Financial Services
Ripple (amongst others) promises to disrupt correspondent banking by driving out delay, cost, complexity, and uncertainty. Will it deliver on this promise? Ripple has recently announced Series B funding of $55 million from some pretty prestigious players. After announcing the Ripple Global Settlement Network, they have 15 of the world’s 50 larges...
21 September 2016 /payments Innovation in Financial Services
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