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Build an asset floor
Support tools, skills and working assets that protect households and enterprises through shocks.
Bankability is not where inclusion ends. It is where lasting inclusion begins.
Households and small producers are building. Too few get the records, assets and confidence to scale.
Cottage / micro units
7.8M → 11.7M
Avg workers / unit
3.1 → 2.6
Build
Assets
Prove
Records
The fragile middle
The fragile middle has no room to fall.
Many households work, earn, repay, trade and produce, yet have too little buffer against the next shock. One illness, price jump, delayed payment or climate event can consume working capital and push progress backwards.
Stacked risks
Insecure work · high prices · health shocks · climate stress
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The CSR compact
Backing people before they become bankable.
Good CSR helps. Great CSR leaves people more able to stand, trade, record and grow.
Make effort visible
Help people build records, transaction trails, identities and market links that institutions can recognise.
Share the infrastructure
Back facilities, partner systems and platforms that no single producer can afford alone.
Why this belongs to City Bank
A bank knows when effort becomes trust.
Road to Bankability works because it uses the Bank’s own discipline earlier in the journey: records, regularity, responsible finance and confidence before credit is on the table.
Performance, with purpose
City Bank’s strength creates room for serious CSR. Its discipline gives that CSR shape: careful partners, clear selection and renewal based on proof.
Signal
Records
Signal
Regularity
Signal
Responsible finance
Four tests before funding
Simple enough to govern. Serious enough to matter.
A good intervention should make people safer, stronger and more visible before it asks more of them.
Test 01
Does it make effort visible?
Records, identity, transaction trails, market links or credible partner systems.
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Test 02
Does it create an asset floor?
A physical, digital or knowledge asset that protects working capital through shocks.
Test 03
Does it reduce the cost of becoming formal?
Simpler documentation, less informal friction and lower hidden costs of entry.
Test 04
Does it open a responsible pathway?
Not a lending promise. A safer path to choose formal systems when people are ready.
Shared language
Language should move people from aid to agency.
Move away from
Distress relief
Move toward
Asset-building finance
Move away from
Beneficiaries
Move toward
Builders and producers
Move away from
Poverty response alone
Move toward
Enterprise graduation
Move away from
Disbursement goals
Move toward
Formal inclusion metrics
Why this is board-safe
No lending promise. No commercialisation of vulnerability.
The purpose is to help households, cottage enterprises and small producers build assets, records, shared infrastructure and confidence before formal finance is on the table.
Board ask
Endorse a direction, not a campaign line.
If adopted, Road to Bankability becomes the filter through which City Bank selects, governs and renews its CSR portfolio.
01
Endorse direction
Road to Bankability as the organising CSR philosophy.
02
Approve discipline
Asset creation, delivery credibility, inclusion pathway and governance controls.
03
Review evidence
Visibility, resilience, partner quality and pathway-to-formality indicators.
Final commitment
The commitment to lasting inclusion.
When effort becomes visible, trust becomes possible. When trust becomes possible, progress becomes durable.
Next step
Turn the belief into the working model.
The presentation that follows shows where to focus, how to govern, how to measure, and how City Bank can make inclusion more durable.
Enter Main Presentation