Montek Singh Ahluwalia to deliver key note address at 3rd ET Financial Inclusion Summit

NEW DELHI: India is a nation that has impressively grown. While the middle class is rapidly increasing in size and enjoying much more purchasing power, thanks to the various schemes offered by banks and financial institutions nowadays, there are other sections of society that are the cause of concern.

The low income households have disparities of income and they suffer the most. Low-income Indian households in the informal or subsistence economy often have to borrow from friends, family or usurious moneylenders. They have little awareness and practically no access to insurance products that could protect their financial resources in unexpected circumstances such as illness, property damage or death of the primary breadwinner.

While most of us ‘make hay while the sun shines’ through the policy changes and new regulations, we are not aware of how some of these policy changes have adverse effects in the form of the Andhra Pradesh Micro Finance Institution Crises. Even though we are on the road towards progression, are we willing to sacrifice these sections of society and their problems for the sake of progression or do we want to ‘include’ all and rise up as a great nation?

Keeping this in mind, at the third ET Financial Inclusion Summit, we intend to take stock of the current scenario, the pros and cons of what we have achieved so far and what we intend to achieve in the future. On the whole, the summit will also focus on how customer-centric financial inclusion has been till date. Does it need to redesign what it offers so as to attract the poor and enable them financially? This summit looks towards sustainable solutions for the poor in the realm of financial services.

The topics that will be covered in this session of the ET Financial Inclusion are:

Regulations that Protect the Poor - Perspectives on the recent RBI regulations and Draft MFI Bill

Designing Insurance to meet the needs of the poor

SHGs, No Frill accounts and Beyond: The Government's role in Financial Inclusion

Alternative MFI Financing: Diversifying beyond Bank Funding

The key note address will be delivered by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, GOI. Some of the other prominent speakers are:

A P Singh, Deputy Director General, Unique Identification Authority of India

Anurag Jain, Joint Secretary (IF), Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, GOI

Gregory C. Chen, Regional Representative for South Asia, CGAP

Sameer Kochhar, Chairman, Skoch Group

V Saikumar, OSD – Life, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority

Shahid Vaziralli, Programme Head, Centre for Micro Finance

Sanjay Datta, Head - Underwriting and Claims, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd.

N C Kulbhe, General Manager, Bank of India

The third edition of the ET Financial Inclusion Summit is being held on the 7th of December 2011 9:00am onwards at The Oberoi, New Delhi.