Inclusive financial sectors

The Center for Global Development reports back from the UN's Forum to Build Inclusive Financial Sectors:

One striking trend apparent at the meeting was that big private money is getting seriously interested in microfinance. Within the last year, Citigroup set up a microfinance group in its commercial, not charitable, operations. There was general agreement that bringing financial services to everyone who could use them was impossible without the private sector - but also that the risk-adjusted returns would probably never compete with traditional investments, meaning that private capital would have to be motivated by a double bottom line of financial and development performance.