Kurt Mettenheim & Olivier Butzbach

This project is designed to gather scholars, alternative banking executives and representatives from savings and cooperative bank associations to rethink strategies for social inclusion in the global south and launch a new policy agenda. Given the search for alternative strategies to counter the recent financial crisis, and the advances of stabilization, transparency and banking supervision in developing and emerging economies, this project seeks to link alternative banking and finance communities in the global north and south to help shape a new policy agenda for social inclusion. Because savings banks, credit cooperatives and other alternative banking and finance institutions have realized competitive advantages over the last decades and since crisis, these institutions provide profound opportunities. Alternative banks in advanced economies are uniquely positioned to help developing and emerging nations redirect large domestic institutions such as postal and savings banks toward meeting the UN millennium goals to eliminate poverty. This project is designed to promote understanding of alternative banking, deepen academic and policy making networks, and provide concrete policy alternatives for bank executives and economic and social policy makers, especially in developing and emerging nations. 

The Alternative Banking and Social Inclusion conference at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center 5-6 July 2011 provided an opportunity to bring together leading researchers and policy specialists to work through ideas and proposals. Given the success of the conference and greater recognition of urgent need for reassessment of banking in the wake of the US financial crisis and its fallout, we now plan to circulate a green paper on Core Principles for Alternative Banking and Social Inclusion, convene events to promote these principles at and through our institutional supporters and networks, and seek adoption of these principles at policy venues.

 

From left to right:

Lauro Gonzalez, Professor and Director, Center for Microfinance Studies, FGV-EAESP
Otaviano Canuto, VP & Head of Network, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM), World Bank
Kurt Mettenheim, Professor and Chair of Social and Legal Sciences Department, Getulio Vargas Foundation São Paulo Business School
Olivier Butzbach, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Naples 2 and Lecturer, King´s College London Department of Management
Lakshmi Kumar, Professor, Institute for Financial Management and Research, Chennai 
Laurence Roland,  Réseau, Financement Alternatif
Ian Callaghan, Shorebank International
Reinhard Schmidt, Professor, Chair of International Banking and Finance, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt
Rob Grzywnski, Shorebank International
Ranjith, Hettiarachchi, CEO, Association of Asian Confederation of Credit Union

 

Institutional Supporters

Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, New York

King´s College Department of Management, London

São Paulo Business School, Getulio Vargas Foundation 

Second University of Naples

Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion, UC Irvine 

 

Networks

Association of Emerging Market Business Schools, São Paulo

Brazil Community of European Management Schools, Brussels

Critical Political Economy Network Global Public Policy Network, London

International Cooperative Banking Association, Brussels 

Social Science Finance Network, Amsterdam

Society for Advancement of Social Economics, Philadelphia 

World Savings Bank Institute

For information and action plan, please visit the Alternative Banking and Social Inclusion Project Wikispace

Contact: kurt.mettenheim@fgv.br