Back to the Future with Postal Savings

• A look at the profile of the current savings clients of India Post that shows this institution's penetration level among the core microfinance client base to be greater than the combined outreach of MFIs and SHGs in India today.
• An overview of these institutions' history shows the movement's progenitors 200 years ago having a level of understanding of how the poor use financial services that is on par with some of the most influential research being done today.
• Over the course of the 19th century, savings and postal banks in many countries spread as rapidly as microfinance does today, providing their primary path to financial inclusion.

That's from a promotional note I just received about this fine piece by Daniel Rozas in Microfinance Focus---an nice blend of history and the latest data.Whether the poor service and corruption of some postal savings banks in developing countries can be as easily ended as Rozas hopes, I don't know. I hope with him, but wonder if there are deeper causes, harder to root out, such as the lack of junk mail (see Going Postal?).