Key findings from the Global expert workshop co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Netherlands and the Rabobank Group and organized by the World Bank’s FISF initiative . Workshop report including links to presentations made at the workshop is available here: Report on Financial Inclusion of Agriculture-Dependent Households Need to focus on broader array of financial services rather than just credit or insurance for agricultural production . Agricultural households have a broad range of financial service needs, several of them for lifecycle and business needs not related to agriculture...

Albert Einstein once remarked "if I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it." Good advice, but unfortunately all too often forgotten. The British post office (Royal Mail) at one point tried to improve its next-day delivery rate from 98 to 99%, in an attempt to improve customer perception of its services. The effort nearly broke the organization, while it would have taken much less effort and resources to simply tell the UK public about the post office's current performance -- surveys showed people thought it was...