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Savings-Led Financial Services Working Group
A savings group is like a tiny local credit union: members save together, lend their savings with interest, and share the profits. Today almost 2.3 million people worldwide participate in some form of savings group. The popularity of these groups stems from a great need among the poor for help with managing household cash flow, particularly in remote villages or urban slums where no brick-and-mortar financial institutions exist.Due to the tenacity and rapid growth of savings groups, donors and practitioners increasingly require a practical understanding of savings groups' operations and their potential for serving the "unbanked" poor. The Savings-Led Financial Services Working Group (SLWG) was created to this end, bringing together practitioners who work with savings groups to both share their knowledge and experience and disseminate learning more broadly. The working group creates publications, holds on-line discussions, and gives conference presentations to further knowledge of savings group methodologies.
SLWG's learning agenda investigates questions such as the following:
- How do savings group members address both long term goals and daily needs while receiving only marginal or irregular income?
- In what ways can savings groups be expanded or replicated while ensuring quality and containing costs?
- What are the risks and opportunities of linking savings groups with external financial institutions, or with other agencies that seek to add health, education, or enterprise development related activities to savings groups' agenda?
- Considering that the majority of savings groups to date are in Africa, how can the African savings group model be adapted for savings group programs recently launched in Latin America?
- What are relevant measures for evaluating social performance of savings groups?
SLWG also has two learning initiatives to increase information sharing among savings-led practitioners. The first is a literature database that collects operational studies, program impact assessments, and training manuals relevant to the savings-led field. Member organizations can contribute their documents to this database and make them easily accessible to savings-led practitioners and the wider NGO community, thus increasing the visibility of savings-led methodologies. A second initiative is mapping member organizations' savings-led operations around the globe. The mapping aims to keep practitioners informed of the growth of savings groups and increase the opportunities for cooperation among organizations.
Publications
- The upcoming book Savings Groups at the Frontier will serve as a follow-up to the 2011 Arusha Savings Group Summit, and is available in draft form at Savings-Revolution.org. Through the site, the authors invite the public to provide feedback and share resources, so that the final publication will represent the most current work being done in the field on savings groups. Click on the chapters below to download the draft versions PDF form.
- Savings Groups: What are They? defines saving groups and profiles the approaches used by the most experienced facilitating agencies and projects. This publication provides an introduction to savings groups relevant to both practitioners and donors. Download the document in English or French.
- Sintesis del foro en linea: Grupos de ahorro en America Latina is a synthesis of a three-day online conference with organizations implementing savings groups across Latin America. Topics of interest include an analysis of different methodologies, strategies for linking groups to businesses and other initiatives, and issues of sustainability. This document will be available in English later this year.
Get Involved
The facilitators for the Savings-Led Financial Services Working Group are Eloisa Devietti and Candace Nelson. Working group members must be staff of SEEP Network institutional members. Click here to find out how you can contribute.
The SLWG is also building an online database of literature useful to savings-led practitioners. The completed database will be publicly available and include operational studies, impact and evaluation studies, and training materials. To contribute materials to this initiative, please send them to Eloisa Devietti.
