Can Formal work with Informal? Lessons, Opportunities and Challenges for Deepening Financial Inclusion from SEEP Network on Vimeo.

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We would like to thank all of you who joined us for the live webinar "Can Formal Work with Informal ? Lessons, Opportunities and Challenges for Deepening Financial Inclusion". For those of you who couldn't join us, we are posting the resources from the webinar on this page. We would also like to invite you to post any questions you might have for the webinar presenters. Any questions posted in the next two weeks will be answered by the team. We plan to take this conversation further in the next few months and hope you will continue to stay engaged.

• Can VSLAs work with Banks and other formal institutions?
• What kind of preparation is needed among VSLAs and Banks/ institutions to do business together?
• What has been the experience of the Banks, MFIs, mobile money service providers?

These are some of the questions that are explored in this webinar, based on experiences and lessons from 8 pilots in 5 countries (Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi), linking VSLAs to institutions such as Barclays Bank, Vodafone, Vision Finance, and MicroEnsure.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Elliot/CARE

On May 21^st , 2013 at 9 am EST our webinar discussed lessons, opportunities and challenges emerging from CARE's 8 financial linkage initiatives. Anuj Jain, Senior Fellow at Coady International Institute, facilitated.

The importance of expanding access to financial services for the world's poorest people is increasingly recognized. But despite the growing international attention to the issue, numerous barriers remain. An estimated 2.5 billion people do not have an account with a bank or other financial institution, severely limiting their ability to save, invest and plan for their future.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Elliot/CARE

The "savings revolution" taking place in many developing countries, which has seen millions of people join informal community savings groups, is now being recognized as a possible solution. These groups fill some of the gap left by the absence of banks by allowing members to save flexibly, access small loans to invest in small businesses, and build a social fund to strengthen their ability to cope financially with unexpected events such as an illness in the family. CARE's Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) group model has proven to be one of the world's most effective, with over three million members in Africa alone.

Photo courtesy of CARE Kenya

To respond to emerging demands of VSLA members for broader range of financial products and services, CARE has tested eight innovative pilots, linking informal savings groups with formal financial institutions, with exciting results that could help deepen the financial inclusion and connect the developing world's "unbanked" with the formal global economy.

Read more in "Connecting the World's Poorest People to the Global Economy."