Microfinance Horizon

24 November 2010 [PressRelease]

Consumer Protection: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities: The latest addition to a growing library of modules developed in collaboration with Microfinance Opportunities with support from Citi Foundation.

Considering today’s climate of economic uncertainty and concerns about predatory lending to and profiting from the poor, there is a movement to provide microfinance clients with financial education. Now available from Freedom from Hunger and Microfinance Opportunities, Consumer Protection: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities is a module in the financial curriculum to train microfinance institution clients and the staff who guide them to empower consumers to ask questions and seek the information they need to fully understand the products they choose and the contracts they sign.

In 2003, Freedom from Hunger and Microfinance Opportunities foresaw the need for consumer education and protection and began to develop a core financial education curriculum with the focus on micro-entrepreneurs and clients of microfinance programs in developing countries. One of the first of its kind to be used in the developing world, this curriculum can help build basic financial literacy for those who want and need to learn how to manage their money and use financial services effectively.

Consumer Protection is a resource for existing and potential customers of all financial institutions, from microfinance institutions to formal banks, as well as to corporate and governmental stakeholders engaged in the emerging global movement for consumer protection. It provides a menu of key messages and training activities that can be used to help low-income populations exercise their rights and responsibilities when using formal financial services. Some of the learning sessions address consumers’ rights and responsibilities, their right to privacy, ways to calculate interest rates, and what to ask before signing a contract, while guiding consumers through some basic technical information that will help them to evaluate and compare products and their costs.