Daryl Collins This is Me

Education

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1. 1. The Financial Diaries

   www.financialdiaries.com/finan - [Cached]

   Published on: 11/30/2006   Last Visited: 1/2/2008

   Daryl CollinsProject DirectorDaryl is a financial economist by background, having started her career as an Emerging Market equity strategist with Lehman Brothers in New York.She moved to South Africa in 1997 to manage domestic and African equity portfolios for institutional clients.Four years ago, she decided to move away from the investment industry to pursue a long-standing interest in understanding the financial management systems of the poor.The Financial Diaries project is the cornerstone of this investigation.She has lectured Finance at the University of Cape Town for the past four years and resides in Cape Town.Please find her homepage on - http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/managementstudies/st
   aff/dcollins/

2. 2. free.financialmail.co.za

   free.financialmail.co.za/08/04 - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/11/2008   Last Visited: 4/15/2008

   Economist Daryl Collins found out something few knew.Low-income earners not only save money, they are better at it than any other income group in SA.
   
   Low-income households save on average 21% of their monthly cash flow, says Collins, who headed the University of Cape Town's Financial Diaries research study project.
   ...
   While the middle and upper class are being squeezed on the back of rising interest rates, Collins has found that well over 60% of low-income households have avoided the "debt trap".
   ...
   But Collins says stokvels are not without limitations.The problem is that stokvels usually do not encourage savings beyond 6- 12 months.
   
   She says this means the poor do not have a balanced savings portfolio.
   ...
   Collins says Mzansi, the entry-level bank account offered by the four leading banks, is another step in the right direction to bring low-income earners into the formal banking system, but this initiative is not the complete solution.
   
   She points out that many customers have closed their Mzansi accounts and there is little information on how active account holders are using it.
   
   Collins suggests that banks use the savings culture of low-income households to their advantage by crafting innovative financial instruments that speak directly to this market's needs."The key idea is to develop mechanisms that would capture the natural cash-flow patterns that already exist in poor households."
   
   She recommends a banking product that uses the grouped savings culture of a stokvel, but offers separate higher interest earning accounts for the long term.
   
   This kind of product might not be that far fetched."I found that most stokvels, particularly the urban ones, already used a bank account opened in the stokvel's name," Collins says.
   
   She also found several low-income households were already using a monthly stop-order to transfer money from their joint savings account into a fixed deposit account.

3. 3. International Year of Microcredit 2005

   www.yearofmicrocredit.org/page - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/19/2006   Last Visited: 11/24/2007

   Daryl Collins is the Principal Investigator of the Financial Diaries.She is a Lecturer in Finance at the University of Cape Town.The Financial Diaries project is based at the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town.See www.financialdiaries.com for more details on the Financial Diaries project.
   ...
   For questions or comments regarding the Financial Diaries, please contact Daryl at dcollins@commerce.uct.ac.za