Champions of Financial Inclusion

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Invitation

Dear Champions of Financial Inclusion,

Greetings from FINO Fintech Foundation!

We would like to extend an invitation to you / your esteemed organisation to partner with Financial Information Network and Operations – Fintech Foundation(F^3) as one of the champions of financial inclusion (CoFI) and strengthen the coalition of changemakers in financial inclusion space in the Asia.
It would be team FINO's privilege to brief you about F^3 and then about CoFI.F^3 is a section 25 not for profit company which acts as a business correspondent on behalf of banks and other financial institutions and enables financial inclusion to millions of poor, unbanked and under-banked people across nooks and corners of India by employing biometric smart card technology with human face.
Over the past three years team FINO has grown at a blistering pace, touching ten million plus customers nationwide across 182 districts in 21 states in India . Our network of bandhus (agents) throughout the country has grown to the extent that we now process two million transactions a month. F^3 is currently involved in a big way in several nation building projects such as NREGA, SSP and RSBY. Through our involvement we have managed to gain unrivaled penetration into the rural market and have acquired an active customer base in previously underserved urban and rural areas. Our network of associates is backed by sound technology which is based on biometric cards and hand held devices used by the local representatives. This new paradigm in banking, anchored around door step service and biometric validation has helped these customers slowly to transit from savings to other products and services across the spectrum of financial inclusion. What brings us greater joy is the realization that this is only the beginning and needs to be strengthened by a knowledge creation and sharing network of multi stakeholders. This realization has incubated a network called Champions of Financial Inclusion.
Champions of Financial Inclusion (CoFI) is a flexible coalition of multistakeholders from various sections of the civil society ,Business community and state actors to make complete financial inclusion a reality and empower poor to mitigate risks which arise chiefly out of poverty. Considering the expertise of CoFI one possible way which we think we could move together is through knowledge generation and knowledge sharing in order to make decision making easier in public and private domains particularly for organizations engaged for financial inclusion in the developing world.
We propose our interactions through multiple channels
• web based resources like fino-cofi blog, Friends of FINO group on facebook etc ,
• Joint research studies and publications,
• FINO Conferences, Brainstorming sessions etc.
Once again team CoFI extend a warm invitation to you/your organisation and look forward for your suggestions and views to address the mutual challenge of financial exclusion in socio economic space.

- FINO Fintech Foundation,India.

http://www.fino.co.in/

Please feel free to contact Mr. Jatinder Handoo regarding any related piece of information at
+91-9769-012016
(022)4161-3466
E- Mail :finocofi@gmail.com

3 comments:

  1. FINO Fintech Foundation does seem to do interesting work. Is FINO Foundation part of the ICICI Foundation? The idea of a network of Champions of Financial Inclusion especially through a knowledge network is interesting. Please keep us posted.

    Muralidharan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Mr. Murali,
    Thank you for your valuable comment . We are constantly working to make this platform more vibrant space in coming days with support of CoFIs . F^3 is not a part of ICICI Foundation but a section 25 NFP Company and a business correspondent. We would like to see you as one of the CoFIs. You may follow the blog.We value your time and relationship with us.
    Thank you,
    Jatinder Handoo
    Coordinator-CoFI

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fino is doing really a fantastic job, I heard a lot regarding NREGA/SSP projects in south(karnataka) My suggestion, kolar is one of our karnataka districts and have lot of unbanked area's and even NREGA/SSP projects are going on.. I am expecting FINO will take steps to start up FI project,can you people do survey and check once...

    Regards
    Sathish

    ReplyDelete