Microfinance creates access to productive capital for the poor, which together with human capital, addressed through education and training, and social capital, achieved through local organisation building, enables people to move out of poverty. By providing material capital to a poor person, their sense of dignity is strengthened and this can help to empower the person to participate in the economy and society.
It plays three key roles in development
- It helps very poor households meet basic needs and protects against risks,
- This may lead to the improvements in household economic welfare,
- It helps to empower women by supporting women’s economic participation and so promotes gender equality.
The success always comes to those who have a broad vision and courage to venture into unexplored areas; those individuals only get the fruits of being the leaders. With this mantra, we have been able to create Village Financial Services Limited (VFS).Responsible action is in our heart and soul in the way we work for underprivileged households & rural entrepreneurs. Now we are one of the most promising MFI in India today, we are playing an important role in day to day life of our customers and we value each individual. We believe in not doing business for mere transactions and games of numbers but we create transparent relations, we work to improve the standard of living of poor households, and that’s our achievement.
Financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit, and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way. Access to a transaction account is a first step towards broader financial inclusion since it allows people to store money, and send and receive payments. A transaction account can also serve as a gateway to other financial services, that is why VFS felicitated to open 2.5 lakhs customers’ bank account into various private and public sector banks and disbursed the loan amount into their own bank account. Not only that, understanding the needs and journey from financial literacy to Financial independence for women, we organized a series of special events and initiatives during the course of the year. These programs and initiatives include the following:
Programs/Initiatives conducted under “Growth & Empowerment” theme:
- Customer Awareness Training
- Community Volunteers’ Training
- Leadership Development Training
- Delinquency Management Training
- Customer Relationship Management
- Risk Management and Training
- Positive Attitude Generation Training
- Microfinance Best Practices and Training
- Microfinance Operation and Training
- Customer Satisfaction Survey
- Impact Assessment Programs
- Women’s Day celebration annually to encourage women empowerment and felicitating the successful borrowers
Today, the state of business technology is moving towards e-business. At the heart of this wide-ranging transformation is the use of technology to digitize complex services. Market leaders in every industry are quietly incorporating as much digital technology into their products, processes, and services as the possible through cashless transaction. Clearly, the nature of transaction is morphing. What is known is that the macroeconomic transformations taking place are real and profound. In that case, organizations like us are also transitioning to the digital world like Web, mobile, and tele—services economy etc. Therefore we are also moving towards digitization in operational activity. This initiative not only reducing the cost of paper and saving time it is also supporting our Go green initiatives. The less paper we use the more trees we can save. To make our world more green is now in our hand.
VFS has grown in leaps and bounds, touching and bringing meaning to life and living of many lesser privileged and backward sections of our society. The growth has come through inspiring and empowering women, bringing qualitative transformation in the lives of their families, helping them to gain confidence and respect in the society through Financial Inclusion.
We firmly encourage taking courageous stands and we will continue to be active on behalf of issues such as environmental sustainability, Female empowerment and social responsibilities. Today we are shaping ourselves to ensure strong support to our customers. There are a number of areas for which we have already reported remarkable progress for digitising of our operational activities.
(Disclaimer: This write-up has been contributed by Dr Kuldip Maity, MD and CEO, Village Financial Services Limited)
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