Stuart Rutherford

Stuart Rutherford is a versatile researcher, practitioner, teacher, and consultant in financial services for the poor in Asia and Africa. A well-known figure in the field of microfinance, Stuart has been a consultant with the World Bank, UNDP, UNCDF, DFID, ADB, EU, MicroSave, and many NGOs including Oxfam, CARE, Save the Children, ASA, BRAC, Gates Foundation, ActionAid amongst others.

Stuart has taught at the University of Manchester, UK has held training sessions for the Boulder Institute in the USA and Turin, Italy, for the Asian Development Bank in Tokyo, and more. Stuart did his Master's from Cambridge University and is also a qualified architect.

Working in the microfinance field in Bangladesh in association with the Global Development Institute, UK, for a DFID project, Stuart developed Financial Diaries, a research methodology that has collected a wealth of information about the behaviours and fortunes of clients of financial services. In 1996, Stuart founded SafeSave, an MFI in Bangladesh that pioneers ultra-flexible savings and loan services for the urban poor. He has published papers and articles in international reports and journals that have helped to shape research in the microfinance sector. Of his books, The Poor and Their Money (2000) has been described by the World Bank as “the best thing that has read on how poor people manage their money.” Other books include The Pledge: ASA, Peasant Politics and Microfinance in the Development of Bangladesh (2009), and the co-authored Portfolios of the Poor (2009). For his services in the microfinance arena, Stuart was honoured in 2011 with the “OBE” (Order of the British Empire). He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Global Development Institute, (GDI), the UK, for which he is currently writing a series of papers based on original research in progress in central Bangladesh. Stuart speaks Bengali, some French and Spanish, and a little Japanese.