CRISIL Foundation, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of CRISIL Ltd, recently opened five Money-Wise Centres for Financial Literacy (CFLs) in the Union Territory of Ladakh.

That takes the total number of CFLs — under the aegis of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to drive financial literacy and inclusion — set up by CRISIL Foundation to 429 across 14 states and four Union Territories, primarily at the sub-district and block levels.

CRISIL Foundation is one of 10 non-profits and the only corporate CSR arm chosen by the RBI to implement the project. These non-profits, with the support of public sector sponsor-banks, have set up around 1,100 CFLs as part of the first phase of this initiative. CRISIL Foundation alone has set up more than a third of these, including CFLs in some of the most challenging areas.

CRISIL Foundation will be managing the 429 CFLs till 2024, in association with 10 sponsor-banks and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), with financial support from the RBI’s Depositor Awareness and Educator Fund and the Financial Inclusion Fund.

CRISIL Foundation and its sponsors aim to transform the lives of over 23 million rural people, with focus on women and youth, across 60,000 villages over the next three years through these centres.

The Ladakh CFLs were inaugurated on July 1, 2022 in the presence of senior dignitaries from the RBI, the State Bank of India, and CRISIL Foundation.

The centres have been designed to raise financial awareness, promote good financial practices, and drive sustainable change in behaviour, leading to informed financial choices, responsible credit behaviour, greater customer protection, and overall improved financial well-being.

They use a combination of educational videos, games, experiential learning, and financial counselling tools to drive home the benefits of using formal banking, financial services and social security schemes, leveraging technology smartly to enhance outreach/ impact and bring in cost efficiency.

The 429 CFLs have ~1,750 grassroots trainers selected from local communities and trained thoroughly by the CRISIL Foundation. They engage with the community and encourage people to visit the centre for guidance on finances — from the basics of personal finance to goal-based financial planning, depositor rights, consumer protection and redressal mechanisms, and digital financial transactions. Villagers can also avail of financial counselling at their doorstep, or at the centres.

Says Maya Vengurlekar, Chief Operating Officer, CRISIL Foundation, “We are committed to empowering the financially excluded by building their capacity. In 2013, CRISIL had launched Inclusix, the only index that provides financial inclusion data at the district level. That set the stage for focused efforts in excluded areas. CFLs are bridging such gaps by reaching the disadvantaged in hinterland, be it edge-of-heaven Ladakh, the foothills of the north-east, or around the deserts of Rajasthan. In all this, the support from the RBI, sponsor-banks, NABARD, and other stakeholders has been tremendous.”

Since 2015, CRISIL Foundation has also reached out to over 900,000 community members, mostly women, in Assam and Rajasthan through Mein Pragati, it’s flagship project for financial capacity-building. Its efforts in Assam were recognised by the Government of India through the ‘National CSR Award 2018’ in the category ‘Corporate Awards in CSR in Challenging Circumstances’, conferred by the President of India in October 2019.