State-Owned Retail Banks (SORBS) in Rural and Microfinance Markets: A Framework for Considering the Constraints and Potential

This microREPORT provides a research framework for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from the Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) consortium’s Financial Services Knowledge Generation (FSKG) research team on the constraints and potential in rural and microfinance markets for state-owned retail banks (SORBs—a term we use to refer to all state-owned, retail-oriented financial institutions including agricultural development banks, commercial banks, savings banks, and postal banks). The report that follows provides an update on research activities and findings to date and outlines the next stages, activities, and objectives of continuing this research. It is accompanied by a bibliography which lists documents, publications and web sites on SORBs for those interested in further reading, three summary case studies of different types of SORBs prepared from existing documentation for illustrative purposes, and tables containing summary data collected during the survey of SORBs which were used for selecting cases for further field research.