ESAF Small Finance Bank Limited hosted the Asia-Pacific Chapter meet of GABV — Global Alliance for Banking on Values here.

Knowledge sharing on advanced financial inclusion using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and Carbon Accounting were also a part of the two-day meet.

The meeting also witnessed the enrolment of two new members from the APAC region to GABV — NMB Bank Nepal and Dai-Ichi, Japan.

GABV is a network of sustainable banks that includes credit unions, community banks and microfinance banks from around the world, which work towards the goal of touching one billion lives by 2020, through sustainable banking. It has set out to prove that sustainable banking provides an important alternative model for financial services.

Currently, the organisation comprises of 58 banks operating in countries across Asia, Africa, Australia, South and North America and Europe. Collectively it serves more than 41 million customers.

K Paul Thomas, MD and CEO, ESAF, said, “Through this initiative, we believe that we are helping them to become more productive and sustainable and we are trying to innovate value-based business models that would proactively use finance for the larger good of the society.” He added, “We believe that the GABV membership gave us an added impetus in our approach towards inclusiveness and sustainable banking”.

Marcos Eguiguren, Executive Director of GABV, stated that “GABV is focusing on a shared mission — to use finance to deliver sustainable economic, social and environmental development and to help individuals fulfil their potential, which would eventually help them in building stronger communities.”

The delegates also visited some women’s groups at Njarakkal to learn more about the joint liability group lending practice followed by ESAF. So far, ESAF has successfully brought approximately over 30 lakh women into the financial inclusion space across 15 states in India.

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