Aishwarya is the Director of the Global Financial Inclusion Initiative at Yale University. The Global Financial Inclusion Initiative focuses on the design and delivery of effective financial services for the poor. It tests and replicates different policies and approaches to help the poor manage and grow their money and to ensure that the financial services available are affordable, efficient, and secure. Prior to joining the Global Financial Inclusion Initiative, Aishwarya was at the Microsoft Research Lab in Bangalore, India.

In this interview, Aishwarya discusses:

• The importance of households savings for the poor
• The scale of the challenge and key pain points
• The barriers for the poor to access the formal financial sector
• Progress that has been made dealing with behavioural barriers