– The “Ahorro para Todos” (Saving for Everyone) program has brought financial literacy and training to 4,500 poor and extremely poor inhabitants of over 50 rural communities in Apurímac and Cusco.
– Financial inclusion: 79% of the people who opened a savings account with this program are women.
- The “Ahorro para Todos” (Saving for Everyone) program has brought financial literacy and training to 4,500 poor and extremely poor inhabitants of over 50 rural communities in Apurímac and Cusco.
- Financial inclusion: 79% of the people who opened a savings account with this program are women.
More than 4,500 poor and extremely poor inhabitants of rural areas in Apurímac and Cusco –the vast majority of whom are women– have received talks on financial literacy in Quechua thanks to the “Ahorro para todos” program started by Financiera Confianza fifteen months ago.
This program is the first of its kind to be undertaken by a private institution in rural areas of Peru and aims to support the financial literacy of people with few resources –most of whom are women– to help them develop good savings habits and learn the difference between formal and informal saving, how to draw up a budget and understand the way savings and loans work, among other objectives.
So far until mid 2015, Financiera Confianza has implemented this program in 52 rural communities in Apurímac, where 4,432 inhabitants of the region have received financial literacy sessions. In addition, two months ago the program was extended to Cusco, where nearly one hundred rural inhabitants of Pisac have now received training.
Martín Naranjo Landerer, general manager of Financiera Confianza, highlighted that the training talks are delivered in the areas and in the actual setting where these communities lead their lives, using accessible language and in their mother tongue. This has meant that through to June 2015, 1,367 local inhabitants decided to open a savings account with the bank, 79% of whom were women. 89% of the customers have thus joined the financial system thanks to this program, and have done so by opening accounts with sums of less than S/.100.
“We are convinced that formal saving helps these people improve their quality of life and allows them to bring order to their household economies, and particularly to ensure the security of the resources they have, all of which contributes to better planning and use of these resources in benefit of their families”, noted Naranjo, formerly the Director of Banking, Insurance and PFA.
47% of the customers who opened an account at Financiera Confianza thanks to this initiative had their children’s education in mind, 20% did so for health reasons, another 20% to cover emergencies, 9% to develop a business and 4% to improve or extend their home or land.
The “Ahorro para Todos” program is run with funding from FOMIN, CAF, CitFoundation and AusAid, in addition to the bank’s own funding, and by the end of 2016 hopes to have helped around 8,400 people to improve their quality of life through savings.
This program by Financiera Confianza is part of its mission to reach out to people with low incomes in order to promote their sustainable development using its own methodology and specialty, entitled Productive Finance. This requires a responsible credit assessment and for its clients’ businesses to generate surpluses, in order to guarantee real and sustainable development.
The bank is leading institution in the microfinance sector, and operates in every region in Peru. It is the banking network with the greatest presence in rural areas of the country. It has a quality portfolio, and the lowest default rate in the Peruvian microfinance system.