Stuart Rutherford
Financial services researcher and consultant
Stuart Rutherford is a researcher and consultant on financial services for poor people, and the founder of the savings cooperative SafeSave in Bangladesh.
1 summary 11 min of listening
Born 1943 in London, United Kingdom
About Stuart Rutherford
Born in London in 1943, Stuart Rutherford graduated from Cambridge University in 1966 and is also a qualified architect. He first went to Bangladesh in 1984 as ActionAid's Country Director there, a post he held until 1990. In that role he set up savings and credit services for more than 20,000 landless families in a remote southern district. He founded SafeSave, a cooperative that offers very flexible savings and loans to poor people in Bangladesh, in both towns and the countryside. He has also served on the board of ASA, a Bangladeshi NGO working in microfinance. In 1995 he published a full-length historical and critical study of NGO involvement in microfinance in Bangladesh. Portfolios of the Poor is among his books in our catalog.