Stuart Rutherford, Independent Consultant & Researcher

Stuart Rutherford is an independent researcher, practitioner, teacher and writer who looks at how poor people manage their money. At present he is developing and testing products in the MFI he founded, SafeSave Bangladesh, co-authoring a book about ‘financial diaries’ (a research technique), and preparing a book on ASA, a Bangladeshi microfinance organisation.
Rutherford, who is British and trained as an architect, started looking at money management by the poor in the early 1970s when research into the aftermath of the Managua earthquake first took him to urban slums. Since then he has worked in the slums and villages of Latin America, Africa and Asia. He is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, UK, and has taught there and at other microfinance courses including those at Boulder and New Hampshire. His most recent research was a review of Grameen II, Grameen Bank’s recent revisions to its products. His best known book is The Poor and Their Money.