Vice President Hamid Ansari today called for bridging the gaps in human development for peace, security and progress of all by adopting innovative approaches such as participatory banking.
New Delhi, Aug 31 : Vice President Hamid Ansari today called for bridging the gaps in human development for peace, security and progress of all by adopting innovative approaches such as participatory banking.
Addressing the Conference on "Participatory Banking for all as a business proposition" here, Ansari said that despite modern banking catering to the basic productive urge of humanity, the picture of human development across the globe is "patchy, highly stratified and characterised by inequality, and a widening gulf in wealth and opportunity."
"Access to our banking systems and the opportunities for growth and entrepreneurship that banking credit provides have also suffered from the same ills, within and across countries," he added.
He said that it is in these interstices of the modern international banking systems that alternative models and paradigms of banking have emerged to cater to niche and specific groups and communities, especially those left out by mainstream banking.
Calling participatory banking a system that addresses the banking and financial needs of diverse communities in many countries, Ansari said its basic approach of no reward without risk, risk sharing and establishment of a participatory relationship between creditor and debtor have been successfully used by private equity and venture capital funds.
"The principles of participatory banking and finance have been mainstreamed at the institutional level, where the clients are large industries or infrastructure projects. At the retail level, however, participatory banking faces real challenges. Participatory banking, like commercial mainstream banking or for that matter any service industry, has to address the financial and banking needs of common people," he added.
ANI