Bank with a Conscience

The more you have, the more you get. This widely accepted, if often unspoken, principle is arguably the credo of most financial institutions today. But then, the Grameen Bank is not your average financial institution.

Flipping conventional, profit-oriented banking on its head, the Grameen Bank (which stems from the Bangla word gram or village) operates on the principle that poverty is not created by the poor, but by the institutions and policies that surround them. It aims to break the vicious cycle of poverty by giving those who need it most – rural people, most often women – access to small-scale loans for business, housing or education. …