MetLife Foundation's Annual Report on Financial Inclusion - Pillar 2: Access to Services
Advancing the development and delivery of high quality financial products and services like savings, insurance, and credit.
MetLife Foundation: Financial Inclusion / Into Action
BURO is a respected and successful microfinance provider in Bangladesh.
Recent research indicated that their largely rural customers would prefer an easier way to manage their microfinance loans. Customers would also like to take advantage of BURO’s savings and remittance services, but because those services require travel to a BURO branch office, many BURO customers use only the neighborhood-based lending groups.
With support from MetLife Foundation, BURO is adopting a mobile technology platform that will provide a convenient way to receive loan disbursements and make repayments, and eventually support more sophisticated transactions. By moving towards a cashless (or “cash lite”) model, BURO will benefit both itself and its customers. Going forward, customers can enjoy more personalized services than the “one size fits all” group loan without having to travel and spend time at a branch. BURO reduces risk of robbery or fraud, lowers the cost of service delivery, and improves efficiency.
If the pilot is successful, BURO expects all its 600+ branches to be mobile-enabled within four years.
To read more about MetLife Foundation's work in financial inclusion, please see our 2014 Annual Report at https://www.metlife.com/assets/cao/foundation/MetLife-Foundation-2014-Report.pdf
