Few entrepreneurs in the UK have been as successful as Emma Harrison at combining the goal of making a difference to people’s lives with achieving financial success.

Not all senior finance executives are paying down debt or putting plans for balance sheet restructuring on hold. Indeed, only around four in ten executives questioned for our survey say that they plan to cut back debt in response to the credit crisis. For those that do not plan to pay down debt, some are continuing with existing plans to invest capital or return cash to shareholders. In many cases, these are companies with solid balance sheets and strong cash flow generation.

In recent years, the Polish economy has been expanding strongly, with more and more families having money to spend and save, providing significant demand for financial services. As a result, firms such as BRE Bank are responding with new ideas. In 2001, it launched MultiBank, an up-market institution aimed at the country’s rising middle class.

In 2003, a reversal of fortunes on the high street coupled with a very public private equity approach prompted UK retailer WH Smith to take a serious look at its pension strategy. With earnings down and despite the failure of a debt-laden buyout approach in early 2004, the board suddenly became extremely uncomfortable about the deficit in its defined benefit scheme, then running at about £152m.

Pensions, health benefits and child support are just a few examples of the long list of payments that governments make to their citizens, and yet many of the recipients have no bank account into which to deposit them, particularly in less developed countries. “The numbers are huge,” says Elizabeth Littlefield of CGaP. She estimates that only 25 per cent of the recipients of these G2P (government-to-people) payments have a bank account into which to deposit them.

As new technologies and payment innovations advance, the regulatory frameworks that are needed to guarantee their fair and legal operation cannot always adapt quickly enough. This creates new obstacles to financial inclusion. After all, the merchant in a small kiosk who, instead of selling only batteries, cigarettes and phone airtime, is now taking in and handing out money via customers’ mobile phones, has essentially become a bank teller.

There are those for whom microfinance is not an option, since a prerequisite for access to even the most basic financial services is access to some kind of regular income. This group is on the lowest rung on the poverty ladder.

Financial exclusion rates are generally higher for women than for men. in Zambia, for example, 68.4 per cent of women are financially excluded compared with 64.4 per cent of men, according to Finscope, a survey of financial inclusion conducted by the FinMark trust. Efforts to improve financial inclusion, for example through the provision of microfinance, have often been targeted at women.

There can be few areas of the world that show so clearly the dangers of over-development than the skyline of Dubai, which once had the highestconcentration of construction cranes in the world. Today, the cranes are idle, the market has stalled and there is a new mood of sobriety.

Synergy Asset Management is a Geneva-based family office that manages money for several high net worth families in the Middle East and Europe. In 2008, Synergy, together with some private investors, set up the Landmark Real Estate Fund, a Swiss-based real estate investment fund that aims to provide solid, low-risk, steady returns in commercial and residential investment opportunities in Switzerland and other parts of Europe.