70 DEVELOPMENT
ONE SIZE DOES
NOT FIT ALL
Delivering Financial Services with
the Clients’ Needs in Mind
Dennis White, President & CEO,
MetLife Foundation
MetLife Foundation believes that
everyone needs the right financial
tools to manage life’s risks and
seize its opportunities. That belief
has inspired MetLife’s operations
since the nineteenth century when
we pioneered “working man’s
insurance” in the United States.
And it inspired MetLife Foundation
in 2013 to make global financial
inclusion the focus of a five-year,
$200 million commitment. world’s issue, important disparities exist in the
industrialized countries too, often along gender,
ethnic, and socio-economic lines, between who
is fully financially included and who is not.
Our perspective on financial inclusion goes
beyond a concern with access alone. Too many
people, even those who may be numbered
among the “financially included,” only have
access to rigid, one-size-fits-all group loans
that do not meet their needs—and may even
leave them worse off. Women, especially, are
more likely to be financially excluded or limited
to group-loan products. And although financial
exclusion is often considered the developing In India, MetLife Foundation g rantee Grameen
Foundation is working to expand client-
centric outreach among some of the poorest
communities in Uttar Pradesh. Grameen, in
partnership with local institution Margdarshak,
is launching a “business correspondent model,”
in which agents acting on the institution’s behalf
fan out among the poor and underserved
communities. Equipped with mobile technology,
these agents go door to door, enrolling and
MetLife Foundation works to ensure that more
of the world’s families have the full range of
financial services they need—safe, affordable,
properly regulated, convenient to access, and
delivered by providers who treat them with
respect. We believe that institutions should
adapt to customers’ needs, not the other
way around. And we’re proud to work with
likeminded partners all over the world, including
in some of the G20 countries.