4. Create partnerships and strategic alliances.

5. Improve the enabling environment.

He cited two examples:

Banamex, which merged into Citigroup in 2001, realized there was a huge remittance market. In 2006 it was $24 million to Mexico alone. Citibank developed Citibank Global Transfers where people can send money to friends and family in Asia, Mexico and Europe for $5. Since most were not Citibank customers they needed to develop an account, which they named Access.

This account lets the customer send low-cost remittances, provides them with a MasterCard debit card for free point-of-sale transactions, unlimited free cash withdrawals at Citibank ATMs worldwide and free online bill payment. It required no minimum balance and the bank waives the $3.00 monthly fees.

The bank hired multi-lingual customer service agents speaking English, Spanish, and Chinese.

The program was launched in late 2003 and was marketed directly and through their partnerships, but although the growth was slow they now have 170,000 customers and are adding about 8,000 a month.

A second success story was CEMEX Patrimonio Hoy.

They sent a team of managers into low-income neighborhoods for a year to study how and when people built houses and used cement which led to the discovery that people used a Tanda or a co-operative money-pooling plan with small amounts being contributed weekly then distributed according to need for special projects of events. People using the system were able to build a room every 1.5 years instead of every 4 to 5 years.

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