IFMR Trust Advocacy Unit (ITAU)

IFMR Trust’s principal strategy for ensuring complete access to financial services is advocacy. IFMR Trust Advocacy Unit (ITAU) identifies priorities for research and action to be undertaken by various IFMR Trust ventures and partners. The outcomes of these initiatives are used for effective advocacy.

To strengthen financial system components that we believe are essential to ensure financial inclusion in India, ITAU supports action-research and pilot projects on access to finance (read about financial system components in IFMR Trust Profile)

ITAU then disseminates important learning, research and operational strategies to IFMR Trust ventures.

ITAU also seeks to influence thinking and action among stakeholders, policymakers and practitioners. It is currently focused on research and action in the following priority areas:

• Understanding the needs and behaviours of low-income individuals, households and small enterprises that have traditionally been underserved by the formal financial market
• Designing and testing appropriate channels for a range of financial services and products such as insurance, savings, loans, investments and remittances
• Evaluating the impact of financial access on individuals/households and economies
• Strengthening the Originate-to-Distribute (OTD) model
• Enabling financial market infrastructure for risk transfer
• Knowledge-building initiatives
• Shaping policy for better regulation and management of risk aggregators

We have a range of on-going projects and partnerships including:

• Partnership with Innerworlds, a group of researchers engaged in understanding rural Indians and documenting their stories
• Incubation support to Centre for Innovative Financial Design (CIFD), one of the research centres at IFMR, established in partnership with 'ideas4' at Harvard University. 'ideas42' designs financial products to bridge the gap experienced by the poor between financial needs and access
• Demonstration and learning via IFMR Holdings, which is piloting the Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services (KGFS) model of providing financial products and services in remote locations of rural India
• Demonstration and learning by researching and designing appropriate financial services for rural migrants via Aajeevika Bureau, a non-profit organisation based in Rajasthan
• Partnership with Centre for Development Finance at IFMR and McKinsey to determine the effects of financial inclusion in two districts in South India
• Partnership with CRISIL to develop methodologies for financial rating of micro finance institutions, vocational training institutes and urban local bodies
• Demonstration and learning from IFMR Capital on emerging financial market intermediaries
• Partnership with Centre for Global Development, one of the world’s top think-tanks, on a research project on financial system design principles for enhancing financial inclusion

ITAU reaches out to a broader community of researchers, practitioners, bankers and policymakers, through presentations and discussion papers, published in the print and web media. We also regularly conduct seminars. Highlights of discussions at these events, along with summaries of research outcomes and reports on on-going projects, are disseminated through our quarterly newsletter Synthesis. Contact us to get copies.

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