After 25 years of devotion to financial inclusion via other organizations, Anne Marie van Swinderen, managing director of L-IFT, recognized two gaps in the sector.

The gaps

Financial service: Insufficient knowledge about the real demand for financial services and insufficient understanding of the complex and real challenges low-income people face in their financial management.

Financial inclusion training: No appropriate courses preparing young people for a career in microfinance. Most institutions hire economics or banking & finance graduates who often have other ambitions than the intensive fieldwork of talking to low-income clients.

The solution

Financial diaries research: By investigating people’s detailed financial behavior patterns over a long period of time, intricate information about people’s financial reality becomes available that makes the demand for financial services better understood.

Career preparation: Conducting financial diaries fieldwork is possibly the best preparation for a career as a loan officer. This realization brought about the plan for decades-long financial diaries research that could be self-financing.

 

To achieve this Anne Marie founded a dedicated company with the involvement of a number of experienced financial inclusion, entrepreneurship, and training and development experts.

 

<< Go back