The current framework for financial services is not suitable to serve the world’s poor.
There are ways to resolve this, however.
Kosta Peric, deputy director, financial services for the poor at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, spoke with JJ Hornblass in a fireside chat at Bank Innovation 2014 in Seattle earlier this month about ideas for a financial services ecosystem for the global poor. Peric described an ecosystem of banks, telcos and startups cooperating to create an open innovation platform and financial app store to help the poor. He insists that such an ecosystem does not have to be cost drain on banking, but a revenue opportunity, despite its altruistic aims.