New Delhi, India, February 13, 2012
—IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is partnering with global microfinance player ACCION to provide advisory support to Swadhaar FinServe to expand its operations in India and enhance access to financial services for women living in city slums.
Swadhaar FinServe, a non-banking financial company working exclusively in Indian urban microfinance, will expand its services to the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. While the potential is significant, few microfinance models in India address the challenges of serving the urban poor.
IFC and ACCION will help Swadhaar design, pilot and launch new products and modify financial services delivery by aiding in risk management. IFC will pay about a third of the project’s $1.1 million budget, while ACCION and Swadhaar together will contribute the remaining two-thirds.
“The collaboration between IFC and ACCION has allowed us to provide specialized assistance and key senior personnel to Swadhaar,” said Michael Schlein, President and CEO of ACCION. “Our collaboration with IFC now spans four continents and is critical toward achieving our vision of building a financially inclusive world.”
The project will help Swadhaar adopt responsible finance programs that follow client-protection principles. IFC and ACCION will work over three years to help Swadhaar scale up, redesign systems and assist in product development to expand its outreach. ACCION recently provided an additional $1.6 million capital to help Swadhaar navigate the challenging environment in microfinance in India.
“We work with the urban poor and micro entrepreneurs, a section largely ignored by mainstream microfinance. With the support of IFC and ACCION, we expect to expand into underserved geographies and client segments where the need for microcredit is the highest,” said Veena Mankar, Managing Director, Swadhaar.
Jennifer Isern, IFC Manager heading Access to Finance Services in South Asia, said, “We are helping Swadhaar strengthen internal systems and develop operational tools to reach more clients in a sustainable manner. The project is aligned to our strategy of building the capacity of microfinance institutions to achieve financial inclusion in India.”
An estimated 81 million people live in slums in Indian cities, most of them earning their living through the informal sector. These families have limited access to financial services. Greater Mumbai alone has a population of 12 million, of which 54 percent live in urban slums or informal housing.
About IFC
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. We help developing countries achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, providing advisory services to businesses and governments, and mobilizing capital in the international financial markets. In fiscal 2011, amid economic uncertainty across the globe, we helped our clients create jobs, strengthen environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities - all while driving our investments to an all-time high of nearly $19 billion. For more information, visit
www.ifc.org
.
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About Swadhaar
Swadhaar FinServe Private Limited is a non-banking financial corporation and a microfinance institution working in urban microfinance in India. It started operating in Mumbai's slums in 2006 with the technical support of ACCION and is present in 36 locations in Maharashtra and Gujarat. Swadhaar offers loans to micro-entrepreneurs using individual loan and joint liability group methodology and served approximately 70,000 urban poor and vulnerable households as of December 2011. For more information, visit
www.swadhaar.com
About ACCION
ACCION is a private, non-profit organization with the mission of building a financially inclusive world. A world pioneer in microfinance, ACCION was founded as a community development organization in 1961 and issued its first micro-loan in 1973 in Brazil. Over time, ACCION has helped to build 62 microfinance institutions in 31 countries on four continents. Those institutions are currently reaching millions of clients. In the United States, ACCION’s is the largest microfinance lending network in the country and has served tens of thousands of clients, with over $300 million in loans. For more information, visit
www.accion.org
.
