To Paris, with CIFD

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank will co-host an international Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development (2010 MIF) to be held in Paris on March, 4-5 2010.

The event seeks to garner and highlight fresh ideas on the use of innovative financing mechanisms to solve development challenges at local, country, regional, or global levels, with the goal that successful innovations may be scaled up and replicated.

The conference objectives revolve around advancing the agenda on innovative financial solutions for development, facilitating knowledge sharing and spurring the evolution of projects that apply innovative financial mechanisms to development challenges.

One of the key elements of the 2010 MIF is a competition that calls for innovative ideas on how financing mechanisms could address development challenges.  The open-call for proposals resulted in around 800 applicants from across the globe.

From amongst the pool of applicants, 20 finalists were chosen; and it is with delight that we note that CIFD’s (Centre for Innovative Financial Design) proposal is among the chosen twenty. CIFD’s proposal is titled “Savings Card: Increasing Savings by Re-Framing it as an Impulse Purchase”.

Anil Kumar, from CIFD, briefs about the proposal that “Savings card is an idea of creating savings when the customer is in the ‘consumption moment’. While the poor is purchasing goods at a purchase point, we present her a nice looking and cleverly communicated savings cards as a product that she can purchase, thereby, riding on the impulse purchase behavior. The card or the vouchers will have images such as a new bicycle or a wedding that tie savings to future consumption or asset purchase.”

The 20 finalists will be presenting their proposals in Paris at the Marketplace, and from among them 5 winners will be awarded pilot grants of up to 100,000 USD each to assist them in the implementation of their proposals.

In the spirit of the location where the 2010 MIF is to be held, perhaps befittingly, we say ‘Tout le meilleure’ CIFD.