The MetLife Foundation has announced a three-year, $1.8 million grant to Opportunity International to promote knowledge and access to financial services in rural China.

By delivering customized financial products and services through banks, mobile vans, and rural service centers, the initiative aims to expand access to financial services for forty-two hundred small businesses in rural areas of China; create or sustain more than twenty thousand jobs; and enhance the financial knowledge and skills of more than thirty-six hundred entrepreneurs through financial training and business development services. The partnership also will study key financial inclusion challenges and offer insights to help improve practices and knowledge within the global development community.

"We're excited by this partnership with Opportunity International because of their broad slate of financial products and long record of successfully reaching people in some of the most impoverished areas of the world," said MetLife Foundation president and CEO A. Dennis White. "Their comprehensive approach to financial inclusion — involving both access to much needed financial services and improved knowledge and understanding of the power of these services — will provide rural entrepreneurs with the resources they need to thrive, create jobs, and increase incomes and assets in their communities."