India’s Rural Regions Gain Financial Literacy Support

Private lending institution HDFC announced that it has launched the first financial literacy program in the regional language of Gujarati in India’s Gandhinagar district.  The program is part of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) advisory to move into the non-organized banking sector in the country’s rural areas.  Under the initiative, HDFC Bank will bring formal banking services to more remote areas in India.

Training for the bank’s branch heads began in March, and the bank has begun distributing pre-printed deposit slips so that individuals need only to fill in the amount of funds they desire to deposit.  A major goal of the initiative is to drive greater financial awareness and to educate people in India’s rural regions on money management.  HDFC is focused on implementing the program in up to 700 villages of the state in the next 12 months.

This greater focus on financial education, including in more remote geographic regions, parallels similar moves in other countries, as the global financial literacy movement continues to expand at an extremely rapid pace.