Financial Inclusion Through a "Brick" Savings Account

Q&A with Lucio Castro

Lucio Castro is the Director of Economic Development at CIPPEC, a leading public policy think tank based in Argentina. CIPPEC has developed an innovative mobile-banking tool targeted to low-income households: a commitment savings account combined with a credit line, attached to a goal related to housing improvement: “Caja Ladrillo” ("The Bricks" Savings Account or BSA).

What inspired you?

The housing deficit is a serious problem in Latin America. It is estimated around 3 million people in the region live in inadequate housing conditions. Another 3 million live in houses that are beyond repair. That is the motivation of our idea, our proposal.

What are you trying to achieve?

What we are hoping to achieve is to launch an enormous financial product targeted to low income households. The basic commitment savings account combined with a credit line attached to a goal of housing improvement. The idea is to pilot this in Argentina, in the city of Buenos Aires, within the population of low income households. 

What obstacles and challenges have you faced?

It’s very difficult to launch this kind of product in developing countries due to micro-economic circumstances and because of the resistance of the traditional financial institutions. Particularly for this segment of the market, it’s difficult to measure risk analysis and  the cost to reach this kind of population.

I think this symposium is a great opportunity to share your ideas, discuss your ideas with top level researchers from Harvard, from American universities, and from universities world-wide, and also to try and reach a much broader audience. And also this is an opportunity, maybe, to put our ideas in practice so someone can support our ideas to take it in practice and to make it a reality.