The Global Savings Forum is the first event to join leaders from around the world to discuss how to provide the world’s poor with access to financial services, especially savings. Through collaboration and building partnerships, the forum aims to identify new, viable approaches to deliver savings and other financial tools that meet the needs of the poor.
Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, today hailed a historic moment that will help bring financial services, particularly savings accounts, to hundreds of millions of people living on less than $2 a day. Speaking at the foundation-hosted Global Savings Forum in Seattle, the first global gathering focused on the role of savings in the developing world, Gates urged leaders in government, banking, mobile communications, and international development to work together to build a new kind of financial infrastructure to bring savings to the poor. She also pledged $500 million from the foundation over the next five years to expand savings. Read the press release.