Princess Maxima of the Netherlands addresses Microfinance conference at Greenwich

United Nations’ Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima addressed a Microfinance Conference at University of Greenwich on Monday, 6 and Tuesday, 7 September.

Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients, including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services. Conference topics included strategic partnerships; enhancing new partnerships; the role of institutions involved; collaborative relationships, and global versus local partnerships.

Princess Máxima works globally with government leaders, financial regulators, parliaments, civil society, the private sector and the media to raise awareness of the importance of inclusive finance to help reduce poverty. She champions access for all to financial services at a reasonable cost so that people can generate income including savings accounts, loans, insurance, payment services and pensions.

The conference, sponsored by Citi, was attended by academics, microfinance practitioners, bankers, foundations, NGOs, development professionals, and financial services providers.

Other guest speakers at the conference included Robert Annibale, Global Director of Citi Microfinance and Dr Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director for the Centre for Financial Inclusion.

Ends

For further information and images, contact:

Nick Davison
Public Relations
University of Greenwich
020 8331 8092
n.a.p.davison@gre.ac.uk

http://twitter.com/unigreenwich

Notes for Editors

Text of the speech given by Princess Maxima. http://bit.ly/b7o0Rb

The University of Greenwich has received over £200,000 in funding from the Leverhulme Trust to carry out major new research on microfinance over a three-year period. This research will help improve financial services for some of the poorest people in the world. It will look at helping people and organisations in developing countries climb out of poverty by allowing them to save safely and also help fund small businesses.

About Citi Microfinance

Working across Citi’s businesses, product groups and geographies, Citi Microfinance serves more than 100 microfinance institutions (MFIs), networks and investors as clients in over 40 countries with products and services spanning the financial spectrum - from financing, access to capital markets, transaction services and hedging foreign exchange risk, to credit, savings, remittances and insurance products - to expand access to financial services for the underserved.

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