Call for Papers/Presentations for the International Workshop on


Inclusive Finance: Making Finance and Insurance Markets Work for the Poor

March 1-3, 2012 XLRI Jamshedpur(India)


Building an inclusive financial sector serving the asset poor households, marginalized communities as well as micro entrepreneurs, who stay at lower rung of the economic and social stratification, remains a key task of policy. Providing sustainable business and employment opportunity to the entrepreneurial class at the bottom of the pyramid require finance. There is need to design innovative financial contracts and instruments, unbundling risk of lenders as well as borrowers, to improve access to finance. Such innovations in financial contract design and risk unbundling can have tremendous potential for financial inclusion, and at the same time enhance confidence among formal financial institutions.



The workshop is expected to serve as a forum for intensive discussion among researchers, policy makers as well as field level practitioners involved in innovative financial inclusion.� Participants are expected to serve as discussants/act as session chairs. The workshop is expected to be participated by a small group of presenters, and therefore will have intensive discussion. Papers with substantial analytical aspects, models of inclusive innovations and filed level data analysis are preferred. We encourage papers and case studies that have broader perspectives, blending both conceptual rigor as well as practical applications, including identifying policy and regulatory constraints.



Submission:� Completed papers (or work in their advanced stage) are invited in areas of inclusive financial innovations, including evaluation case studies. The Workshop will have few presentations of success stories by their innovators that have an wider replication.



Contributions in all areas of inclusive financial innovativeness are welcome:



1. Financial Market Architecture and Access to Poor

2. Financial Innovations as Market Access

3. Rural Finance Innovations

4. Pro-Poor Urban Finance Innovations

5. Micro and Small Enterprise Financing Innovations

6. Venture Capital Funds & Social Lending Arrangements

7. Structured Products, Credit Enhancements and Guarantees

8. Financial Innovation to Support Savings

9. Investment and Insurance-linked Products

10. Micro Insurance Products

11. Weather Derivatives & Crop Insurance �

12. Commodity Finance and Risk Management

13. Managing Inflation Risk for Poor Households

14. Technology Innovations for Financial Inclusion

15. Transaction Banking Innovations Enabling Market Access

16. Review of International Experience



Poster Session: Case analysis, innovative research ideas and field level experiments are also considered for a poster session. Young researchers with innovative ideas are particularly encouraged to apply for the poster session.

Deadline: We encourage paper presenters to intimate their submission plan at the earliest with an abstract(preferably by December 31, 2011). Final papers (or work in their advanced stage) are to be submitted in word-format to: pradhan@xlri.ac.in� by February 15, 2012. Funding: Accommodation expenses and local travel arrangements at Jamshedpur will be covered for all the speakers and participants.� Travel expenses within India can be covered for a few academic participants with completed papers (or work in their advances stage), on a first-cum-first served basis. Outcome: Refereed papers and Cases of high quality presented at the workshop will be published by an international publisher.