Major Announcements to be made on services to the money transfer sector

The World Bank estimates that a conservative $300b is sent globally through official means by migrant workforces. This alone is growing at around 8% a year. In some countries as much as 20%.

Astonishingly until now there has never been an international data base detailing who is doing what and where in the world.

In response to the demand for an effective database, IAMTN is co-ordinating an international drive to bring together all available data in the money transfer business.

There will be contributors from major brand named banks and organisations all over the world.

In the UK, Developing Markets Associates have hosted a data base for the Department for International Development, called the DFID Remittances Information Library. This has been sponsored by DIFID and commissioned by the UK Remittances Task Force (UKRTF).

DIFID has taken a leading global role in influencing improvements in remittances.

The DRIL data base will provide essential information to money transfer companies, development organisations, governments and academic departments."

Says Leon Isaacs, director of Developing Markets Associates, and member of IAMTN Board, "This has been a particularly exciting project to work on. There is a breadth of disparate work on remittances that have been produced over a number of years; now a large sedction of that is available in one user friendly place."

Adds Lady Olga Maitland, CEO of IAMTN:"We will be building on this excellently researched and most useful work. At our 3rd Global Consumer Money Transfer Conference, we will announce plans to create a database that is international in scope with a significant number of major players being involved. The need for such information has been obvious for a long time. We have decided we can now rectify this gap."