Videoconferences: Schedule and Overview

Videoconference sessions will be held on Thursday, 16 August; Wednesday, 19 September; Thursday, 25 October; and Thursday, 29 November, 2007 at these times: 14:00-17:00 (Japan); 10:30-13:30 (India, Sri Lanka); 12:00-15:00 (Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Thailand, Viet Nam); 13:00-16:00 PRC, Mongolia, Philippines; and 15:00-18:00 (PNG)

The videoconferences will be webcast. Please review webcast details. Participants will have chance to ask questions during the videoconference. Local facilitators will organize and select the most important questions. Participants who watch webcasting can send in questions by email to adbitdlc@worldbank.org ^*

Speaker:Mr. Barry P. Maddams, Deputy CEO, Khan Bank of Mongolia

Barry Maddams has over 40 years of international banking experience in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States. He is currently Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Khan Bank, the largest and most profitable bank in Mongolia with 447 branches throughout the country. He was previously Chief Operating Officer of National Microfinance Bank, Tanzania which had 108 branches throughout the country. He has worked for several major international banks including Lloyds Bank, Daiwa Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Mizuho Bank. He has an M.A. in History from Cambridge University, England.

Barry Maddams' presentation

The VC presentation on 29th November 2007 will focus on Khan Bank’s turnaround from being a bankrupt state-owned agricultural bank to being a commercially sustainable financial institution with a portfolio of micro and small business loans. During and after the turnaround period, interest rates dropped from 60% to 24% and products and services were increasingly delivered through the bank’s expanding network of on-line real-time branches.

Speaker: Nimal A. Fernando, Principal Microfinance Specialist, Asian Development Bank (ADB)

Nimal Fernando is the ADB Focal Point on Microfinance. He is the Editor of ADB's quarterly newsletter on Microfinance, Finance for the Poor. He has published extensively on various aspects of microfinance development, and has designed and conducted training programs in rural finance and microfinance. Prior to joining ADB he worked at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka for over 15 years. He was a member of the Executive Committee of CGAP during 2002-2005. He has microfinance/rural finance work experience in many countries in the Asia and Pacific region.

Nimal Fernando's presentation

An increasing number of practitioners are recognizing that improving access to finance requires enabling policies and regulation and effective supervision. As microfinance continues to integrate into mainstream finance and industry boundaries become blurred, however, new questions are being raised. What microfinance activities should be regulated? Who should regulate them? This presentation will comprehensively discuss the current issues in microfinance policy, regulation and supervision.

Speaker: Heather Clark, International Consultant on Microfinance

Heather Clark is a microfinance consultant and the former Director of UN Capital Development Fund's Special Unit for Microfinance. She developed the Microfinance Distance Learning Course and has taught microfinance at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, the American University School of International Service, and international microfinance workshops. She has been the Senior Technical Advisor with USAID's Microenterprise Development Office, and has worked with NGOs, specialized banks, and member-owned organizations that provide microfinance services. She is the author of a book on the organizational history of ACLEDA Bank in Cambodia, a commercial bank that specializes in microfinance. Ms. Clark serves as a faculty member at the Microfinance Training Program (Boulder, USA and Turin, Italy).

Heather Clark's presentation

The presentation will focus on why the numbers are important. Rather than calculations -- the centerpiece of the CD-Rom lessons and tutor instruction -- this session takes a deeper look at the numbers. It focuses on how the numbers and financial performance are a reflection of management decisions and how the customers view and value the services of an MFI.

Building Commercial Microfinance, Getting the Foundations’ Right

Speaker: Stuart Rutherford

Stuart Rutherford is a researcher, writer, teacher and practitioner of microfinance. His main interest is in studying how poor people manage their money, and this interest is reflected in the name of his best-known book, The Poor and Their Money. Currently he is researching the reception that clients and village level staff are giving to the new products offered by Grameen Bank under its Grameen II project. He is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester, UK, and has also taught on the microfinance training programs in Boulder and New Hampshire. He was for some time on the board of ASA, the fastest-growing of the Bangladesh MFIs, and he is the founding chairman of Safe Save^*, an MFI which experiments with ultra flexible products for poor and very poor people in Bangladesh. Stuart lives in Japan.

Stuart Rutherford’s presentation

Stuart Rutherford will start by making sure that participants have a clear understanding of what is meant by commercial microfinance. Then he takes a fresh look at commercial microfinance by comparing the history of its emergence at the end of the 20th century with the history of how banks first started to serve poor clients in rich countries at the beginning of the 20th century. The comparison will challenge the participants with the question "are we building commercial microfinance on the right foundations?" He will argue that to fully succeed, commercial microfinance will move away from its narrow base in loans for women-owned micro-enterprises, to basic services that help people save and borrow for a wide range of everyday needs.