Posted on April 6, 2009 - by Gavin

FINO enrolls 5 Million unbanked Indians to avail financial services…

Duniyalive.com

Mumbai: Financial Information Network and Operations Ltd. (FINO), a Mumbai-based biometric-enabled smartcard solutions provider, engaged in providing financial, non-financial products and services to the unbanked rural masses has enrolled 5 million customers to avail them basic banking and insurance services.

Since its inception, FINO has meticulously reached out to the non banked sectors of the country and has played a pivotal role in strengthening the banking radar of India. FINO is on rapid growth journey and is working with Andhra Bank, Corporation Bank, ICICI Bank, ICICI Lombard, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Sewa Bank, and other financial institutions.

“One of the biggest challenges in micro banking industry is the huge amount of paperwork and human effort traditionally involved in supporting micro transactions and credit-scoring potential customers. High costs, coupled with low returns, did not make microfinance viable beyond a certain threshold, thus hampering growth. This ‘one-card-does-all-solution’ resolves these barriers to growth by providing end-users with an easy-to-use and highly secure mode to conduct financial transactions, and for us to supervise transactions electronically,” said Mr. Manish Khera, FINO CEO.

Founded on July 13, 2006, with the single objective of building technologies to enable financial institutions serve the under-served and un-banked rural sector; FINO is extremely honored by the trust of leading Indian banks and international investors. FINO provides biometric smartcards to microfinance partners, banks, government and insurance organizations. The card facilitates financial services like savings, loans, insurance and remittances. Mr. Rishi Gupta, FINO CFO & President (Sales & Marketing), said, “FINO is working closely with Private and Public Sector entities including Government agencies to bring them all onto a single solutions platform by 2011. We are planning to issue more than 25 million cards by end of March 2011.”

Last year, FINO won the “Breakthrough Award” in the New Markets Category at CardTechSecurTech 2007 conference held at San Francisco, US. Card Technology (Global Magazine on Smart Cards) recognized FINO for its Universal Remote Transaction System (URTS) that had the potential to reach a vast market of consumers without bank accounts.

Source: http://www.duniyalive.com/?p=12971