Leveraging Efforts on Remittances and Financial Intermediation

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Date
Dec 2006
EDITOR
INTAL
This report seeks to analyze the efforts among financial institutions to leverage the relationship between financial intermediation and remittance transfers. The impact of family remittances has been highlighted in the literature as an important one for development. A development impact is one that addresses issues relating to the distribution of wealth and overall improvements in the quality of people's lives. More recently, policy recommendations have stressed the importance of linking remittances to financial intermediation as a strategy to harness the development impact of such earnings. This paper attempts to identify emergent trends in the remittance and finance world that potentially point to a deepening connection between remittances and development vis-à-vis financial intermediation. It is a case study analysis of nine financial institutions, and focusing on three basic indicators: institutional ability to provide remittance transfers to its clients and community, to offer low cost remittance services, and to compliment transfer services with other financial services.