Blog

Financial Services for Health: Treating the Cause

Health expenses push 100 million people into extreme poverty each year. While private sector innovation can play an interim role in financing out-of-pocket expenses, the long-term focus should be on making poor people resilient to health shocks.

The Wrong Kind of Credit: Why Loans to Gig Workers Must Reflect Income

Volatile gig income and inflexible loan repayment schedules can be a dangerous mix, as this ride-hailing driver in Nairobi learned from experience. His story serves as a cautionary tale to lenders and borrowers in the gig economy.

Survey Shows Gathering Clouds, but No Storm (Yet) for Microfinance

How is COVID-19 impacting the portfolios of microfinance institutions (MFIs)? Are MFIs facing a liquidity crisis? Is the solvency of institutions at risk? CGAP's global, monthly survey began two weeks ago, and answers are beginning to emerge.

Beyond Hackathons: Reaching Developers with Your Digital Finance APIs

Hackathons aren't the only way for a digital financial services provider to engage third parties with its open APIs.

How Is the Pandemic Affecting Agents? Here’s What Providers Tell Us

As customers, agents and digital financial services providers adjust to COVID-19, it’s becoming clearer what a resilient agent network looks like. Providers should take note to prepare for future crises.

Indonesia’s Retail Credit Crunch Requires Action to Keep Shelves Full

Indonesians could face empty shelves and a shrinking assortment of products due to credit crunches within consumer goods value chains brought on by COVID-19. Here are three things that can be done to keep the situation from snowballing.

Financial Services for Gig Workers: An Intersection of Needs in Kenya

Gig workers in Kenya cite savings, loans and medical insurance as top financial services they would like to access via gig platforms. While platforms across Africa increasingly offer credit and insurance, savings appears to be under-supplied.

The Box, Not the Tools: Managing Credit Risk in Asset Finance

Pay-as-you-go solar companies and other asset finance providers are using cutting-edge tools to manage credit risk, but many lack the risk culture, governance structures and processes to use them effectively.

Financial Services Build Resilience in Face of Crises Like COVID-19

In its efforts to develop a theory of change for how financial inclusion can improve poor people's well-being, CGAP has learned several lessons that shed light on what to prioritize during and after the COVID-19 crisis.

Ghana Launches World’s First Digital Finance Policy Amid COVID-19

While the new policy has been years in the making, the government hopes the policy will support its measures to leverage digital financial services in its COVID-19 response.

API Technology Jargon: What Business Leaders Need to Know

Here are three design principles that financial services providers should keep in mind when making technology decisions related to their open API products.

How Social Media Is Fueling Women’s Entrepreneurship in Myanmar

Many women in Myanmar and across Asia are using social media to conduct online commerce. Meet three entrepreneurs who are engaging in this type of informal e-commerce in Myanmar and have created jobs for other women.

Financial Inclusion and Resilience for FDPs in the Time of COVID-19

Learn about the recently launched "We Build Bridges: Roadmap to the Sustainable and Responsible Financial Inclusion of Forcibly Displaced Persons," in this guest post from BMZ and IRC.

Open Banking: 7 Ways Data-Sharing Can Advance Financial Inclusion

When banks and other financial institutions responsibly exchange customer data with other providers, the result is better products for low-income customers.

Asset Finance Innovations Can Advance SDGs – If They Scale Responsibly

New asset finance business models are breaking down old barriers to putting life-changing assets into the hands of poor households. But to meaningfully advance SDGs, they’ll need to scale responsibly, and this is where funders can play a role.

Kenya’s Expansion of G2P Becomes Lifeline During COVID-19 Crisis

Kenya offers higher fees to providers that facilitate digital government-to-person payments in underserved areas. Today, this makes it easier to reach hundreds of thousands of low-income people with assistance during the COVID-19 crisis.

Agent Networks: Vital to COVID-19 Response, in Need of Support

Digital payments are central to the global COVID-19 response, but the agent networks that distribute these funds are struggling to remain open. Here are three questions policy makers must answer to ensure agents reach as many people as possible.

Customers Want Data Protection: How Can Open API Providers Deliver?

Open APIs can benefit digital financial services providers and low-income customers alike, but they pose data protection and privacy challenges. Here are some tips on how providers can address those challenges.

The Best Laid Plans...CGAP's Response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

CGAP spent time thinking about how we can add unique value to a coordinated crisis response. The work we are doing to combat the effects of coronavirus is refocusing those efforts in new and unanticipated ways.

COVID-19 Exposes Risks and Opportunities in Kenya's Gig Economy

Gig workers in Kenya report major disruptions to business and depleted savings due to COVID-19 (coronavirus), while platforms signal eagerness to facilitate government-to-person payments or loans to hard-hit workers.