Nobel Prize winner, Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank has called for an urgent redesign of the world's financial systems and a major shift to a more 'inclusive' banking system through microcredit and social business.

The Grameen Bank has spread microfinance to over seven million people. To date the bank has loaned over $7 billion  (£5 billion) and 99 percent of those loans are paid back. The approach has spread throughout the world, even to New York, and is soon coming to Glasgow.
 
Responding to the global financial crisis, Professor Yunus described it as an opportunity to bring about fundamental change. 'The financial, environmental and food crises are all interrelated and are all driven by selfishness. We must seize this opportunity to come up with an alternative financial system, based on trust and selflessness. The poor are suffering from financial apartheid. They make up two-thirds of the world's population but are currently excluded from the system. The real issue is not whether the poor are credit-worthy but whether banks are people worthy,' said Professor Yunus.
 
Giving the example of a new collaboration with multinational company Danone to provide micronutrient-rich yoghurt to poor, malnourished children in Bangladesh, he said: 'Every problem can be turned into a social business essentially. Each one is the development of a seed, and it can be replicated to change the world instead of to make money.'