Consumer protection in Inclusive Finance, with Jayshree Venkatesan

It used to be that developing markets suffered because they didn’t have physical bank branches. And as a result, a lot of innovation sought to find workarounds that the developed markets just didn't need.

But now that none of us have physical branches, the solutions built in the developing markets have the freedom to spread globally. I’ve spoken about this before in the context of fintech, but today we look at how what we learn about responsible lending and safe banking experiences in the developing world, might help us build the same in the developed world.

Join me and Jayshree Venkatesan from Center for Financial Inclusion as we chat about her latest research on the topic.

You can sign-up to the Responsible Finance Forum mailing list by clicking here and plan for Financial Inclusion Week (October 17 to 20) over at www.financialinclusionweek.org

That 99% Invisible episode on curb cuts can be found here - https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), while you can find my action-adventure novels on Amazon, some versions even for free.

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.

Regards,

Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Jayshree Venkatesan 0:00

We believe that consumer protection is crucial to ensure that all the progress that we have made in the last decade, with respect to access to accounts, etc, continues to deliver value. Essentially, it means that we need to develop a way by which people can trust formal financial systems and continue to have positive experience.

Brendan Le Grange 0:22

Let me start this episode with a little plug for podcasting as a communications channel. It's a question I get asked from time to time: whether there's value in building a podcast for brand or personal marketing. And it's not the easiest question for me to answer because it's nuanced and contextual. I don't reach a huge number of ears, yet, please do share the show far and wide. But a typical episode will get 500 to 1,000 downloads in the first month, maybe a little more if the guest does a nice job of helping to share the content early on when the algorithm is still hungry. That's not enough to move the needle for most businesses, certainly not if we treat those ears only as potential clients.

So I don't, instead I keep an eye on high value engagements and doors opened that might not have been otherwise. Maybe as many as one in three of the completely cold call approaches I make to guests gets a positive response - and these are very busy people with little to gain. And after maybe one in three shows, I get to play matchmaker between one guest and someone in my network, or one of my guests plays matchmaker for me within their network. And one of the leaders on that front has been Joffre Toerien - you will remember him from episode five when we talked about scoring for microfinance.

When I just started the show, and the download numbers were barely in the teens. Joffre, the brain behind Credit Insight Analytics was the first guest I ever reached out to without having some pre existing relationship. And not only was he generous enough to jump right in and learn with me, he became one of the show's biggest supporters in terms of content sharing, but also in terms of matchmaking. And in fact, he is how I found today's guest, Jayshree Venkatesan, Director of Responsible Finance and Consumer Protection at the Centre for Financial Inclusion. Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange.

Jayshree Venkatesan, Director of Responsible Finance and Consumer Protection at the Centre for Financial Inclusion, welcome to the show.

Jayshree Venkatesan 2:38

Thank you, Brendan. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Brendan Le Grange 2:41

Oh it's a pleasure. Financial inclusion is a topic that I love to discuss on here. Most of the time, I'm talking to an individual lender who is looking to improve the situation in their unique way. So that's always inspiring to hear, but can only ever be part of the story. You, through your research, have access to a far broader view. So I'm really looking forward to getting myself a bit more educated on the challenges of financial inclusion and what it really means, and to hear about your latest research.

But before we get into that, you bring to this current role a wealth of diverse experience with Centre for Financial Inclusion, but also with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, with the World Bank, with some of India's largest private banks, and even as a founder yourself of a mezzanine fund - underlying that fact that you've got your finger on the pulse of the financial inclusion world. Would you mind expanding a bit on that background, and what brought you to where you are today?

Jayshree Venkatesan 3:41

Yeah, sure. So my background and training is very strongly in banking and finance. I joined one of India's largest private sector banks after my MBA. I love finance and the possibilities that it offers and I decided very early in my career that I want to use the power of finance for greater good. And then there was an opportunity to work with a specialised group within ICICI Bank that focused on areas of development priority. So these were health, education, and microfinance. And so I jumped at it.

And then briefly worked with a startup that worked on livelihoods. I then move to a consumer research agency, came back to inclusive finance, and then joined the team that founded this institution called Atma trust in India, they're now called Dvara Trust, and several of the initial founding team is now responsible for policies and the infrastructure that you see in the finance space in India. And it was very much an institution that offered space for experimentation, they nurtured intrapreneurs and really allowed us to bring our ideas and financial inclusion alive.

And so I started on the supply side of financial services and looked at institutional financing. And this was way back in India when capital markets didn't quite recognise microfinance as a legitimate or reliable asset class; banks didn't want to lend too much to microfinance institutions. But at the same time, you had private equity that was beginning to flow in. And there was the danger that we sensed that promoter equity would get diluted pretty quickly if the raise capital from private equity investors at that point. And then there was a set of institutions that catered to customers that didn't quite have the wherewithal to attract, you know, mainstream capital. And we ran the risk of leaving a large segment of the population underserved.

And so that was the thinking behind launching mezzanine investments, which is how can we provide equity-like capital and make sure that promotor equity is not diluted rapidly, but at the same time, allow leverage and allow them to, you know, bring in senior debt and build the processes and systems that are required to grow responsibly. So that was the the origin.

My first investment was in the state of Bihar, which is one of the poorest states in India, where ACCION was actually the equity provider in the transaction. And that went on it was successful for a bit and then the microfinance crisis in India happened. And so the bank stopped lending, credit rating agencies began asking for higher first loss default guarantees, and that made the MFI business untenable. So we had to restructure our facility to come in as a second loss default player.

And that allowed MFIs to access liquidity, allowed us to get profitable, we hit operation profitability, eventually expanded the business to set up the first alternate investment fund, we got the first licence from the capital markets regulator.

And somewhere around the stage, I realised that I needed to move on because things were stable. As far as you know, the wholesale financing space was concerned and the government was launching at that point, various policy centred on financial inclusion, and there weren't as many entry barriers to the sectors when when I had started, and I needed a new challenge. So I became a consultant and focused on the demand side, because I realised that in the microfinance world, our tendency was to look at customers as one homogeneous segment, which is obviously not true, and the financial lives of low income people, you know, much more complex than we can ever imagine. So with CGAP, I worked with - which is a think tank, housed within the World Bank - I worked for about five to six years, where we focused on understanding what does it take to build a customer centric business? And how do you translate insights on customer lives into relevant products and services in a way that it delivers value to both the customers as well as the business?

And that took me to working beyond India, East and West Africa, worked in Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Balkans. And that consulting stint actually gave me the opportunity to understand differences in financial systems across countries, and almost be on the ground as various business models were coming to life, and understand the emerging risks with rapid digitization. So at the end of that project, I decided I needed to go back to school. So I went, I went back to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy with the idea that I need to reflect on where the world was going, and what are the implications of these changes on the inclusive finance space? And how do I deepen and broaden my skills. So I took courses that were more tech and law oriented, I took social network analysis, I studied privacy by design, and then graduated into the pandemic, which is really a point when I think everybody in the sector was all hands on deck.

And so I went back to CGAP. And I worked on this very innovative study that looked at consumer complaints on social media. And I use social network analysis to scrape and look at what are consumers saying, what are the risks that they are experiencing with respect to digital credit, but also what are the regulatory and supervisory challenges when you're dealing with some of these older issues that credit is normally seen, but now everything is at scale. As I worked on that, it led me to Centre for Financial Inclusion and my current role, where I lead research on consumer protection and responsible markets. So that's my journey.

Brendan Le Grange 8:59

And now you're at CFI, Centre for Financial Inclusion, and I guess, to some extent, it does what it says on the tin, but what does it set out to achieve within the broader financial landscape?

Jayshree Venkatesan 9:10

So we live in a world today, where about 1/3 of the world's adults lack access to formal financial services, and about half of these are women. And on one hand, you know, we have made progress in the last decade, so about 1.2 billion adults have got access to a bank account. We know from the recent JSMA reports that 1.35 registered mobile money users exist, and we know that the pandemic has accelerated access in us in the last few years. The problem with the numbers is that access doesn't necessarily translate into financial well-being in the long run, or greater resilience.

We also know that the pandemic has pushed about 115 million people into extreme poverty and that there are wider inequalities both within countries as well as between countries. And so CFI's role as an independent think tank is to conduct research and advocate for evidence based change to make sure that all of these people that are excluded or newly included, can make use of financial products and services to improve their lives and prosper. So that's our vision, the origins.

We are an independent global think tank, but we sit within ACCION. We were founded by ACCION, which has a series of investment funds, and we were set up in 2008, following the IPO of Compartamos, which is a microfinance institution in Mexico. And it was one of ACCION's earliest portfolio companies, and ACCION decided that they would use the IPO earnings to give back to the community. And so what they created was CFI, which operates as a public good.

We focus on four thematic areas: which is consumer protection, data risks and opportunities, women's financial inclusion, and green inclusive finance. And then MFMs and fintech are cross cutting areas that cut across all of the four work streams.

Brendan Le Grange 11:00

For me, it's interesting to hear, because when I was growing up in the industry in South Africa, the government did a big push to get more bank accounts to people. And so the banks created a product and rolled it out. But it was kind of 'we've done our job, and now we're going back to the real work'. And so it's really good to hear that it's gone far beyond that now. And it's thinking about 'how do these products actually change the lives of the people that they're supposed to serve?' And not just imagine from somebody sitting in a boardroom, in a in a city that somewhere.

And also to hear, you know, that the extra risks of digitization... It's obviously a whole different world to surface, little scrapings that I know. So yeah, a lot more to this than meets the eye, or at least typical city based banker might think of. (100%)

That work you're doing is obviously being recognised, your roles are growing. The IFC has recently transitioned the convening role of the responsible finance forum to CFI. So really embedding you guys in the heart of the discussion between private sector, government, policymakers and academics to the lending organisations as well. So I guess there's two quick questions embedded in that. What is that Responsible Finance Forum (RFF)? What and how are you ensuring its value, as you've mentioned, now, they were living in a time where responsible finance is arguably more important than ever. So yeah, maybe if you could expand a little bit on the RFF and how you're helping it to grow.

Jayshree Venkatesan 12:31

So CFI has always been a leader in consumer protection. And today, the consumer protection risks are not just about what happens at the business model level, but also what happens at the market level.

And so we recognise the need for these diverse actors, whether it's private sector or investors or donors or regulators to work together and drive critical conversations around the risks that we see emerging. And as an independent think tank, we are uniquely positioned to facilitate these conversations. So RFF is a coalition of global stakeholders that works to equip the inclusive finance sector to assess and manage existing and future risks as they emerge. And there's a long history to the responsible finance forum or RFF. It was originally created in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the various microfinance crises that we saw in emerging markets. And it very much intended to bring together private sector governments, practitioners, policymakers, academics, customer organisations, and so on to share emerging best practices, solutions and initiatives to scale up financial inclusion, more responsibility, and it was originally convened by the IFC, CGAP, VMZ at the Netherlands Ministry of Finance, in partnership with the wider G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion Community.

And what it did back then, or since 2009, was convened this annual event that brought together these different stakeholders, we realised that the annual event is going to be crucial to facilitating these conversations. But we also recognise that the complexity of the inclusive finance landscape today demands a slightly different approach. So we've reimagined RFF, what we've done is set up RFF as a platform with three core functions.

The first is to aggregate research across the sector, and help identify critical and emerging issues that will impact low income customers going forward. The second is to build a network of partnerships that will leverage you know each other's strengths to build this sector knowledge and build on the sector knowledge. And the third is regular convenience. So the annual event will continue but then we will have, you know, more frequent contacts either through webinars or other other mechanisms to make sure that there is this constant knowledge exchange. So that's that's how we've reimagined it.

I'll have more information on that closer to the event in June. What we do hope is that artefact will be this dynamic platform that will help build then exchange knowledge amongst different stakeholders so that, you know, we are coming at these problems with our own unique perspectives, but also building on each other's strengths.

Brendan Le Grange 15:10

Yeah, it sounds like a definite force for good. And in terms of your day to day work, you're actually fairly new in your current role as a CFI but you seem to have hit the ground running with that CFI remit, which is broad ranging. What is it that your team is focusing on? And people that are watching the work that you produce, what should they be expecting?

Jayshree Venkatesan 15:34

Yeah, we believe that consumer protection is crucial to ensure that all the progress that we made in the last decade with respect to access to accounts, etc, which I just spoke about continues to deliver value to essentially it means that we need to develop a way by which people can trust formal financial systems and continue to have positive experiences. And if they don't, then there is a way for them to get redress, but in a painless manner.

So with this in mind, CFI consumer protection workstream has three focus areas, we think about emerging consumer protection risks. And this is in the face of global events, like the pandemic, like climate change, like some of the geopolitical risks that we've seen, in the face of, you know, emerging business models, so platforms with embedded credit inshore tech, everything that's driven by tech, and then ongoing issues of raw data protection, consent, price, transparency, everything that we've seen, historically with consumer protection. So that's as far as the emerging consumer protection risks second set.

The second bucket is where we think about, well, what kind of market conduct supervision can they have in place. And because regulation is almost always retrospective in nature, you know, there is always a lag between what happens on the ground and board's regulation then steps into address. But we think that with technology, there is an opportunity to elevate the voice of the customers directly and identify risks as close to real time as possible, and get proactive about supervision. And you have tools like natural language processing, you have machine learning, when you apply that to existing databases that supervisors might have that regulators might have, then you know that there's a whole new set of tools that can be developed.

And then the third bucket is thinking about protection by design. So the way financial services are designed today is you have UX designers that sit in in one silo. And then you have compliance departments that sit in another silo and as far away from the UX designers as possible. And then the compliance is usually an afterthought, and is limited to things like if I see terms and conditions, but what's happening, you know, because UX designers are trained to design systems that are intuitive, but they're not trained to think about the consumer protection aspect of it, they end up designing interfaces that as a consumer, you might end up using, but inadvertently take on products or risks that are not suitable for your current position at all. So this area of work focuses on breaking the silos between the UI UX designers and the compliance guys so that we can create environments that are designed to protect consumers from the outset.

Brendan Le Grange 18:14

What's really interesting there, is that this is very relatable to all lending businesses. So I think back to when I was doing my MBA, and we were reading the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, CK Prahalad's book. In there, they were talking about all these clever ways to solve some of the problems that are inherent in having a lack of cash flow, and ways to think differently. But in the financial world that was maybe translated through to something like Grameen Bank, who found a way to work around a lot of infrastructural problems, a lot of problems that came with needing to make very small loans with expensive to serve dispersed populations. And so it did work arounds that were really clever on the ground, but they were interesting to people in developed markets but weren't really something you would apply in your home market.

Whereas, you know, protection of of consumers is something that regulators all around the world are interested in it's like, are we over-lending, is a product that's targeting or inadvertently harming vulnerable consumers? All these things? I mean, you're talking about machine learning, NLP, these are all tools that every bank is using in the developed world as well. And so while the look and feel might be quite different, there's a lot of lessons, no doubt, that any lender can find in there.

And I think also reflective of that much more creative way of thinking through these challenges, is one of these studies that you have published with CFI, where you were looking at the resilience of fintechs during the two years of the pandemic that we've had so far.

That got me thinking, because I'm always talking about digitalization and how the pandemic has spurred a lot of people here to more quickly adapt Have some online channels or some new models that are mobile first. But those fintechs that are driving that, they causing some behavioural changes in the UK, they're awakening consumers to what's possible, but if that FinTech who was the pioneer goes too fast and burns out and disappears from the market, the changes they brought about are going to live on because the banks are copying them. Everybody, except maybe the original investors, is better off for that innovation. But I would imagine that in these developing markets, because it's the fintechs, who are actually distributing the funds on the ground, if these fintechs were to disappear - because of all the chaos of COVID and the extra costs and the extra risk concerns that were raised there - this isn't missing out on a luxury, this isn't a change of branding, having to go back to your old bank who's now slightly improved thanks to the challenger, you're back to where you were 10/ 20 years ago with no access to finance.

You took a look at how resilient they are. And yeah, so what was it that you were looking to do, and what did you find about these fintechs?

Jayshree Venkatesan 21:09

Yeah, no, you're you're absolutely right. So there is there is a little bit of difference between the developed world and the developing world in the sense that regulators and supervisors have to obviously think about, or worry about, the continuity of the services, and what happens if they do exist in the developing world. There are also other fundamental shifts that need to take place. So our intent, when we did that research was essentially to find out - well, we knew that several fintechs have survived for whatever reason, because, you know, they were supported adequately by either the policy environment, or they were able to pivot very quickly, or, you know, their original investors provided them with networks or capital or whatever else was needed - but what does that mean for the customers that they serve? Or the consumers that they serve? And how did their resilience translate to the resilience of the consumers?

There are several other things that need to be addressed. The first is that the legal system needs revamping in several countries to meet the needs of these new business models. And by that, I mean, we need much more clear laws on insolvency and bankruptcy and what happens when a firm goes under? And how do you then continue to protect consumer interests? Particularly if you know not if you're a credit provider necessarily. But if you're taking savings, for instance, and you know, you're dealing with consumer money, how do you make sure that their interests continue to be protected.

So that's a policy or legal issue that we will need to address going forward. The second challenge is, is that of trust, because there's a lot more opportunity or frauds or Ponzi schemes, when a firm closes, consumers lose trust. And so the next time they are approached by even a similar firm, there is lower willingness to use these financial services. And here are focuses on building strong redress mechanisms prevent erosion of trust in various ways, and we seek to address regulators or market monitors, you know, through that effort. And the third challenge is the continuity of services and experiences. So if a smaller firm serving, for example, the urban poor, gets absorbed by larger banks not necessarily goes under, but gets merged into a larger institution, will the urban poor continue to remain a segment of strategic interest? Or will we see some kind of permission drift? And what is the responsibility of investors and donors to prevent this shift? And so what can we do in terms of measuring outcomes, and remaining committed to those outcomes, irrespective of you know, where the business decides to pivot? So that's how we think about the long term implications of of the work that we're doing in that area?

Brendan Le Grange 23:46

Yeah, it's great to see all the changes, you know, the last 10/ 20 years, all these businesses have emerged to solve these problems, but if we don't support them, they could just as quickly disappear.

Another pillar that you've already talked about is women's financial empowerment, which wasn't initially surprising to me because, as I say, my brief exposure to the concepts of building financial inclusion in the developing world was built around groups of woman micro-entrepreneurs to take out a loan. And, you know, I'm not sure we could quite put it this blindly. But the idea was, that if you lend money to the men, they would be far more likely to spend it on themselves down at the local pub. Whereas if you lent the money to the women more likely to be more responsible, and also redressing some of the sort of inherent imbalances in society.

I was looking at the research that you're doing, and you start to bring up all these things that really as a sort of a man living in a developed world. It's a huge luxury that didn't enter my mind, but things like being able to carry around a mobile phone and use that for mobile phone banking, or the other broader societal problems that hadn't really come into my mind here. But these are some of those customer protection issues that you've been looking at much more carefully.

So what are you seeing that can be done to support a safe and secure online environment for women and why is it so important for financial institutions to be doing so?

Jayshree Venkatesan 25:23

So the funny thing is that, although microfinance is always, you know, focused on women-led groups, the group model itself acted as a black box to hide what went on, you know, within the group, and I think the inclusive finance community is waking up to the need for gender-disaggregated data. And just to understand, does access to financial services really empower women in the way that it's meant to does it give her better decision making abilities within her household?

The other thing to keep in mind is that although there's been quite a bit of progress in terms of, you know, people having access to accounts, either bank accounts or mobile money accounts, the gender gap has remained constant over the last decade. And, of course, there are some countries where this is much worse because of the social norms that govern financial access and decision making.

And that's a problem because it essentially says that something's not working. And women are not using financial services that the way that we thought they would use it, part of the reason could be norms. And of course, there is a great deal of research that's being done in that area. But even when women have, you know, higher income levels and higher education levels, we find that they continue to opt disproportionately for informal financial services. So clearly something is broken.

And one of the reasons as we experience rapid digitization is that is the lack of safety or the fact that they feel unsafe in online environments. And online environments are unique because they heighten the risks that you can experience in a physical environment.

So for instance, if you don't have adequately secure systems, it can result in identity theft, it can result in stalking, it can lead lead to harassment. And when one grows up in an environment that imposes social censure, there's great reluctance to complain. And even if you have a complaint, assuming you have a complaint mechanism that works and that exists.

So even if that exists, it's very hard to get women to complain. And often the complaint process puts the person that complaints the woman in the limelight, or investigates the complaint in an insensitive way. And so there is, you know, there is all incentive to stay quiet and just stop using the service. And that's a problem, because what we need to see is actually greater use of the service. And that then leading to better life outcomes in some way.

So there's a lot that needs to be done by policymakers and regulators in creating easier complaint processes to check if the information that's being asked for by lenders is necessary and proportionate to the services that they provide. So does the lending app really need access to my phone messages or phone gallery or call records? And if you are accessing that information, then how you're going to use it, which then leads us to think about data rights. So there's a lot that needs to be done, you know, in unpacking, what does the safe and secure online environment mean? And how do we create that?

Brendan Le Grange 28:26

Yeah, and I think, again, a nice example of where perhaps the downside of this process is starker in some of these contexts but would exist in almost every society. So things that might not be obvious problems to the lender in a developed market may still exist, and I think that lenders who will look at the work you're doing and have a deep think about your own products might be able to pick up some ideas and some thoughts on how they can create more inclusive experiences for the customers, wherever they are.

What sorts of new challenges are emerging when when these things go digital?

Jayshree Venkatesan 29:05

Sure, good question. So I would allocate the challenges in two buckets. So there are challenges that arise because of the use of technology. And this may be with customers who may or may not be new to financial services. And then there's a second set of challenges that arise with newly included consumers, because they're just not familiar with the digital environment. So the tech challenges can be of two types. There are, you know, the more traditional risks, which you always see with digital lending, which is, which is now at scale, because technology enables that scale, which is this sale of products, undisclosed fees, abusive debt collection practices, because you know, the the country doesn't have adequate consumer protection laws, you know, so those are the older risks, but you know, which you see now at scale.

The second set of challenges are due to what tech itself enables. So synthetic ID fraud where you see new identities that are being created by combining elements from different identities. And the impact of that is, you know, some element of your ID is there. And so if you get blacklisted for fraud, or you know, if your ID if the synthetic ID comes up and is, is sort of black marked, then you potentially also get embroiled in a legal suit. And so if you're not familiar with legal processes, and you're not familiar with the financial system, this can be, and it can be a massive waste of your time and money.

And then there are AI related biases that come in with digital credit apps that look at different data trails, but the data trails tend to replicate what society has, you know, in terms of barriers and biases. So the AI related biases simply amplify those biases from the real world, and prevent people from accessing financial services when really you want to enable access to financial services there. So that's as far as the tech is concerned. And then you think about challenges with a newly included consumer segment. And then you deal with issues of lack of familiarity with digital systems and financial systems. So poorly designed interfaces, fraud, especially when you have to rely on another human being like an agent to transact and you, you know, freely give away your pin. And you're not really aware of the risks of doing that, or poorly designed redressal systems, which, you know, demand that you need to have a fairly high literacy level, or digital literacy level in order to raise a complaint - so a number of issues there.

And then finally, you have the regulatory gaps. And these are arising because of what we call the modularization of financial services. So financial services are being broken up into these different providers. It's almost like division of labour. But not everybody in that supply chain is directly regulated by a financial sector regulator. So if you have a challenge that arises with one of these intermediaries, how do you go about addressing it, and just that gap in the regulatory architecture leads to a whole new set of risks that need to be addressed.

Brendan Le Grange 32:11

And I've said a few times now that these are far more transferable lessons than they ever were in the past. But if a lender is listening, and they thinking, well, this doesn't really apply to me, I'm a brand on a high street in a developed market, what ways can everybody be taking steps to be more responsible lenders?

Jayshree Venkatesan 32:32

So there aren't really different levels of responsibility. I mean, in a sense, everyone has to be responsible. A good way to think about this is to think about the consumer journey. So at every stage, it is possible to map whether something is broken or not. And then that gives us a sense of the risks that both the consumers face as well as the business faces.

For financial service providers or lenders or other stakeholders, they have to think about the impact that they're having on the people that they provide services to. And the advantage of designing processes and systems for the most vulnerable segment, is that you end up designing a financial system that is better for everyone. I think they call it the curb cut effect, which is the analogy in the real world is that you know, as you design curbs or sidewalks to benefit people who use wheelchairs, you end up making the curb better for people who have strollers, people who are biking, and eventually, you know, benefiting a larger population. So a good way to think about financial services and responsibility is the curb cut defect.

Brendan Le Grange 33:36

I remember there's a 99% Invisible podcast episode on, I guess, the inventor of the curb cut. And it's a it's an amazing episode. Now, I'm talking from memory which is a little bit dangerous, but I think, essentially, w itas something that was almost forced on cities, and then they did it and suddenly saw those knock on benefits to all all users on the sidewalk. And yeah, it's a great way to think about it is changes we can make, and we can be more responsible. And it just makes the product better. So yeah, it's a lovely way of looking at it.

And I think you've discussed a lot of interesting topics are interesting and important topics. And I'm sure people that are listening are going to want to learn a bit more and maybe look at some of those case studies that you've worked on some of those articles you've written, where should somebody go to find out more about the work you're doing, or to learn more about the projects, you've completed some of those ideas that you've raised today.

Jayshree Venkatesan 34:29

So the first port of call would be the website, which is www.CenterforFinancialInclusion.org

And then we also have a LinkedIn page where we regularly post information about new papers and research that we put out. The other thing to think about would be we spoke about the Responsible Finance Forum and the first events since the relaunch will be held in June. So on June 29th and 30th and there'll be an announcement about that.

But the other anchor event in our portfolio is what we call financial inclusion week with Just an annual event this year, it's being held between October 17 and 20th. It's open to all, it's virtual. So the website for that is www.financialinclusionweek.org and you will also find recordings of the previous years there. So that's essentially brings together everybody in the sector to tell them, here's what everyone's talking about your issues that you need to worry about. Here are solutions or innovations that people are doing. It's a great one week affair.

Brendan Le Grange 35:32

Yeah, and as you said, it's open to everyone because I think I talked to two people in here and a lot of the lenders are trying to bring about some type of financial inclusion, some sort of improved access to credit or often sometimes more responsible lending, and they might not have thought they were welcome. So it's great to hear that. But certainly an event that anybody who's got any focus on improving access to credit or improving the level of responsibility among lenders should keep an eye on/

Jayshree, thank you so much, it's been really interesting overall, a great education for me, and an eye opener.

Jayshree Venkatesan 36:08

Thank you again.

Brendan Le Grange 36:10

And thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed that, please do rate and review on your preferred podcast platform and share widely including on LinkedIn. And while you're there send me a connection request. The show is written and recorded by myself Brendan Lr Grange in Brighton, England and edited with assistance by Kane Hunter. Show Music is by I am weak and you can find full written transcripts now in several languages, show notes and more content at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show.

And I'll see you again next Thursday.