Microfinance India Summit 2008

Inaugural Session

Welcome address

• Brij Mohan, Chairman, ACCESS

Special Address

• Steven Solnick, Country Representative, Ford Foundation
• M V Nair, Chairman, Union Bank of India
• Deepak Khanna, Senior Program Manager, Global Financial Markets, IFC
• Simon Bell, Sector Manager, South Asia Finance and Private Sector Unit, World Bank

Release of State of the Sector Report 2008

Networking Break

Plenary Session I: Looking back, looking forward: The state of the microfinance sector in India
The State of the Sector Report traces recent developments in the sector and tracks progress across models and methodologies. It analyses key data and helps in benchmarking growth and provides an update and a review on the nature and dimensions of the sector's growth.  The author will present key highlights from the report.

Chair

• YSP Thorat, former Chairman, NABARD

Lead Presenter

• N Srinivasan, Author, State of the Sector Report

Discussants

• Vijay Mahajan, Chairman, Basix
• Dr KC Chakrabarty, CMD, Punjab National Bank
• Amitabh Verma, Joint Secretary, Banking Division, Ministry of Finance

Plenary Session II: Deepening outreach: Graduating the poorest into microfinance
Most practitioners and experts agree on the limits of microcredit to effectively serve the needs of the poorest.  CGAP and the Ford Foundation present a "graduation" model that promises a new pathway for the poorest into microfinance and leading Indian practitioners share their experiences.

Chair

• Robert Annibale, Global Director Microfinance, Citigroup

Lead Presenter

• Syed Hashemi, Senior Microfinance Specialist, World Bank

Panelists

• Vikram Akula, CEO, SKS Microfinance
• David Gibbons, Chairman, Cashpor India
• C S Ghosh, Founder and CEO, Bandhan
• Shamika Ravi, Assistant Professor, India School of Business

Lunch

Breakaway Sessions

Securing the future: Contributory Micro Pensions
Less than 12 percent of India's 321 million paid workers have access to a pension scheme. The remaining workers, most of whom are employed in the informal sector, are excluded from formal retirement provisions and will need to achieve retirement incomes from their own lifetime savings. The panel will discuss new ideas and challenges of achieving broad-based coverage of micro-pensions among India's low income workforce.

Moderator

• Gautam Bhardwaj, Director, Invest India Economic Foundation

Panelists

• Ashish Agarwal, Executive Director & CEO, India Invest Micro Pensions Services Pvt Ltd
• A Viswanathan, Central Provident Fund Commissioner, Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India
• Subhash Garg, Principal Secretary Finance,  Rajasthan
• Zaitoon Esmail, Associate, Standard Chartered Bank

Diversifying financial services: A case for microinsurance
Despite IRDA stipulations, microinsurance products are still not reaching the poor. There are very few innovations in terms of dedicated products for the poor. Delivering  microinsurance, awareness on its value, its administration are still key factors. The session will dwell on these issues and undertake stocktaking.

Chair

• Tarun Bajaj, Joint Secretary ( Banking & Insurance), Ministry of Finance

Lead Presenter

• Anil Mehta, Director Group Business, Max New York Life Insurance Co Ltd

Panelists

• Muhammad Junaid, Regional Technical Advisor , UNDP Regional Centre for Asia/Pacific, Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Anna Somos Krishnan, Executive Director, Planet Finance India
• K.C. Mallick, CEO, Biswa
• Ralf Radermacher, Director (Research & Training), Microinsurance Academy

Building capacity, informing choice: Investing in financial literacy
As the sector progresses, there is a growing concern on the need for financial literacy of the clients. It helps the poor to better utilize loans, better manage their household cash flows; it helps the clients to distinguish the value of different financial products. Financial literacy protects the clients from exploitation and helps them make informed choices. The session will highlight the need and significance of financial literacy as a part of the greater financial inclusion campaign.

Chair

• B P Vijayendra, CGM, Reserve Bank of India

Lead Presentation

• Jayshree Vyas, Managing Director, SEWA Bank

Panelists

• Bharat Parekh, Senior Programme Officer, INBAR
• Justin Oliver, Research Coordinator, CMF
• Usha Padhee, Director, Mission Shakti- Orissa
• Dr Percy Barnevik, Board member, General Motors

An urgent priority: Meeting the needs of urban poor
While the sector has rapidly scaled up in rural areas, there has not been enough focus on financial services to the urban poor. In recent years, there has been some interest in reaching out to the urban poor. How different has been the delivery of services to urban clients? Are urban microfinance products different from rural microfinance? Issues and experiences of pricing, products and delivery of services will be discussed by panel with diverse experiences.

Moderator

• Raghvendra Singh, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation

Panelists

• Samit Ghosh, CEO, Ujjivan Financial Services
• Harsha Thadani, Manager, Market Insight, WWB
• Jaipal Singh, Executive Director, CMF Jaipur
• Neeraj Agarwal, Project Director for Affirmative Action, NIIT

Networking Break

Plenary Session III: Setting standards of client servicing
The microfinance industry's dedication to the welfare of its clients in a period of rapid growth has become critical. There is a need to avoid reckless lending, ensure transparent and fair pricing, adopt fair and non coercive collections practices, establish ethical standards among staff and maintain privacy of client data. Social performance of MFIs has become equally important as financial performance. The real challenge is to maintain dual balance between rapid upscaling and meeting the highest standards of client service and protection.  ACCION International has brought together this special panel to highlight the issues relating to client protection.

Lead Speaker/Moderator

• Robin Ratcliffe, Vice President, ACCION

Panelists

• Vijayalakshmi Das, CEO, FWWB
• Sitaram Rao, Director, ACCESS Development Services
• M.S. Sriram, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
• Udaia Kumar, CEO, Share Microfin
• Swapnil Kant Neeraj, IFC

Plenary Session IV: Global meltdown and microfinance: Implications for the sector

Lead Speaker/Moderator

• Vijay Mahajan, Chairman, Basix

Discussants

• Vikram Akula, CEO, SKS Microfinance
• Eric Savage, Managing Director, Unitus Capital
• Moumita Sen Sarma, Head - Microfinance and Sustainable Development, India, ABN AMRO Bank
• Nancy Barry, Enterprise Solutions to Poverty

Plenary Session V: From transactions to transformation: Bridging the economic and social divide
The session will focus on issues such as gender, social stratification, methods of microfinance service delivery, women's empowerment and the nature of poverty. It will also look at how dividing issues into economic and social compartments costs the microfinance sector's effectiveness in the outcomes it seeks. The effort will be to look at ways in which a holistic can be developed which will cause microfinance to move from transactions to transformation.

Chair

• Michael Drinkwater, Senior Advisor, CARE

Lead Speaker

• Joy Deshmukh- Ranadive, Director, Indian School of Microfinance for Women

Panelists

• Tara Nair, Research Head, Friends of Women World Banking
• Annie Duflo, Research Network Director, Innovations for Poverty Action
• Smita Premchander, Founder, Sampark

Networking Break  

Breakaway Sessions

Pricing Transparency : The important next step
Transparently stating accurate pricing of microfinance products is increasingly being discussed as an important next-step for microfinance. Though the industry has long been transparent on financial indicators, pricing transparency has seldom been practiced in microfinance, even though it is common practice in formal financial systems. Pricing transparency is listed among all the recently-launched consumer protection movements, and this session will discuss the issues and challenges of applying pricing transparency in microfinance.

Lead Presenter

• Chuck Waterfield, Founder, Microfinance Transparency

Panelists

• Alok Prasad, Country Head- microfinance, Citibank
• Muralidaran Vijay, Head- Advisory Service Group, Unitus
• Sanjay Sinha, MD, M-Cril
• NK Maini, CGM, SIDBI
• Oliver Schmidt, Manager- Regional Office Hyderabad, Sa-dhan

Technology for Microfinance: New frontiers
Mobile phone banking, using retailers as agents for banks, and improving back-office information systems (IS) are all ways in which technology is already working to help microfinance institutions reach scale and reduce costs to serve greater numbers. In this panel discussion, some of the innovators in these areas will share their experiences. Policy constraints in integrating technology in microfinance will also be discussed.

Lead Presenter

• Gautam Ivatury, Microfinance Specialist, CGAP

Panelists

• Alex Ibasco, Smart Communications, Philippines
• Abbas Ali Sikander, Group Executive Director ,Tameer Microfinance Bank, Pakistan
• Manish Khera, CEO, FINO
• Rohit Bhargava, Founder, Bomtech Inc

Networking Break

Plenary Session VI: SHG Bank Linkage Programme : Sustainability and Impact
NCAER recently completed a detailed study covering 7,000 households to assess the sustainability and impact of SHG Bank Linkage Programme in 7 States of India. Major findings and recommendations of this important report will be shared at the session and attempt will be made to draw a new road map for SHG movement for greater benefit to poor.

Chair

• Y.C. Nanda, Former Chairman, NABARD

Lead Presenter

• Dr Suman Berry, Director General, NCAER

Panelists

• Ramakrishna Regulagedda, Senior Program Specialist, GTZ
• A Ramanathan, CGM, NABARD
• Al Fernandez, Executive Direcotor, MYRADA
• Dr Anushree Sinha, Senior Fellow, NCAER

Lunch

Breakaway Sessions

Savings: Options , avenues and the policy environment
Often savings is a greater priority for the poor than credit. However, for the small savings of the poor there are few options that are secure, flexible and also have a positive yield. The panel will discuss the options that the poor have for savings.

Lead Presenter

• Graham Wright, Program Director, Microsave

Panelists

• Marie Louise Haberberger, Program Director, GTZ
• Joyce Lehman, Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• S Mukhopadhyay, General Manager, Rural Business- Technology, SBI
• N Srinivasan, Author, State of the Sector Report

Community based models: Looking beyond SHGs
With an outreach of more than 3 million SHGs and cumulative loans of over Rs. 20,000 crores SHG- Bank linkage is the dominant delivery model in microfinance. With more than 15 years of success with the model, the panel will explore innovative future options for SHGs in terms of products and services delivery as also the value of their higher order formal aggregation.

Moderator

• Malcolm Harper, Professor Emeritus, Cranfield Institute of Management, UK

Lead Presenter

• Prakash Bakshi, Executive Director, NABARD

Panelists

• Dr Salomo, DGRV, Germany
• Narendra Nath, Executive Director, Pradan
• Anirudh Tiwari, Country Coordinator, IFAD
• R Sowmithri, Managing Director, Sarvodaya Nano Finance Ltd

Social Performance: Increased Accountability and Transparency in Microfinance
The growth of the microfinance sector is beginning to lead to questions about the effectiveness of microfinance as a poverty-elimination tool. Practitioners in this space are starting to pay greater attention to whether their programs reach the poor and very poor, and whether the lives of their clients improve over time. Investors that are concerned with both the social and financial returns offered by microfinance investments can use social performance data to better understand the outreach and social outcomes of the MFIs in which they invest.

Moderator

• DSK Rao, Regional Coordinator, Microcredit Summit

Lead Presenter

• Jeff Toohig, Program Officer, Grameen Foundation

Panelists

• Geeta Goel, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
• Suresh Krishna, CEO, Grameen Koota (Grameen Financial Services)
• Frances Sinha, Executive Director, EDA Rural

Networking Break

The challenges of regional skew- microfinance vision for Bihar
This session will address the issues of the need for a shared long-term vision for micro-finance in Bihar, among the most underserved states. This will provide a comprehensive framework through which the sector could be activated in the State. The Vision document mechanism helps to establish milestones that are trackable. The key recommendations of the vision document will be presented and discussed.

Chair

• U C Sarangi, Chairman, NABARD

Panelists

• Sushil Kumar Modi, Hon'ble Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar
• K N Hazarika, CMD, NEDF
• Prakash Bakshi, Executive Director, NABARD
• Arbind Singh, Executive Director, NIDAN

Valedictory Session
The session will have presentation on Summit summary, various achievements in the microfinance sector and the challenges in the way forward with expectations for the next year.

Chair

• Rakesh Rewari, Deputy Managing Director, SIDBI

Special Address

• U C Sarangi, Chairman, NABARD

Special presentation

• Women SHG leaders

Panelists

• Malcolm Harper, Professor Emeritus, Cranfield Institute of Management, UK
• Brij Mohan, Chairman, ACCCESS Development Services