Banking For The Poor: McKinsey Strategy

From McKinsey Quarterly [free but registration required], "A new idea in banking for the poor: By teaming up with retail outlets in low-income, often hard-to-reach areas, financial institutions can create value both for themselves and their new customers" November 2010, by Alberto Chaia, Robert Schiff, and Esteban Silva:

Correspondent banking has become one of the most promising strategies for offering financial services in emerging markets. In this model, financial institutions work with networks of existing nonbank retail outlets—such as convenience stores, gas stations, and post offices—to deliver financial services. This approach can be especially powerful when serving the unbanked poor because of its ability to reduce banks’ cost-to-serve and reach low-income workers where they live. In Brazil, where the strategy has enjoyed its greatest successes, about 1,600 municipalities (approximately one-third of the total) are served solely by correspondent-banking outlets.

Read the complete McKinsey & Co. article here.

Obesity Is Rising Around The World: McKinsey & Co.

From McKinsey Quarterly, the business journal of McKinsey & Company, "Why governments must lead the fight against obesity" by Jeffrey Algazy, MD, MPH, Steven Gipstein, MD, Farhad Riahi, MD and Katherine Tryon, MD:

The world is getting fat. In many countries, the proportion of people at an unhealthy weight has more than doubled in the past few decades. Globally, at least 1.3 billion adults and more than 42 million children are overweight or obese.

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Source: McKinsey & Co.

Read the complete McKinsey Quarterly article here.

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Substantial And Sustainable Is The Right Infrastructure Investment: McKinsey Quarterly

From the McKinsey Quarterly article, "The right way to invest in infrastructure" by Michael Lind:

But to support such an infrastructure modernization in the United States and to strengthen its infrastructure industries enough that they might ultimately generate revenue beyond its borders, funding needs to be not only substantial but also sustainable. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States needs to spend at least $2.2 trillion over five years for deferred maintenance of existing infrastructure and investment in new infrastructure. Infrastructure is the kind of public capital asset—with high up-front costs and long-term, continuing benefits—that justifies public borrowing within the limits of a capital budget distinct from ordinary appropriations. For this reason, Congress’s short-term investment proposals deflate the important role infrastructure could play in a long-term recovery. The more effective solution would be to establish a national infrastructure bank, modeled on the European Investment Bank and some state-level economic-development banks.

Read the complete article here.