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Access to Insurance Through Regulation and Supervision

Adequate regulation and supervision enhance policyholder protection. That is the ultimate objective of insurance supervision and regulation according to the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS).

Over-indebtedness: Striking the Right Policy Balance

Debt stress is an inherent phase in the evolution of credit markets and in credit cycles, but it is also a significant source of instability.

Six To-Dos Now for Responsible Investors

At the mid-year Social Investor Roundtable, the Sangam Group (CEOs of the 10 largest MIVs) and annual Development Finance Institutions (DFI) consultation on responsible finance agreed on a “to-do” list of six concrete actions for investors.

Can Self-Regulation Protect Microfinance Clients?

Effective self-regulation rests on two key components: a transparent and consistent standard to measure compliance and a credible mechanism to ensure that it can be enforced. Smart Certification provides that standard. What could provide its enforcement?

Supporting Client Protection In Cambodia

Last week the Smart Campaign launched the much-anticipated Client Protection Certification Program, an independent, third party evaluation to publicly recognize financial institutions that meet adequate standards of care in how they treat clients. This post launches a short series that offers different perspectives on how certification can benefit clients, individual MFIs, and the broader sector. This post shares how AFD and FMO, the Dutch Development Finance Institution, are supporting client protection improvements in Cambodia.

Who Is Targeted? Financial Pyramid Schemes and the Poor

In Kenya, where the qualitative research provided input to a policy diagnostic on financial consumer protection issues and approaches, at least one person in each of 14 groups was personally affected by a pyramid investment scheme.

Financial Crime: Risks For New Formal Finance Customers

There are a range of financial crimes that may occur in the financial inclusion space. This post highlights the most relevant risk elements from a financial inclusion perspective.

What If Poor People Do Care about Privacy of Their Financial Data

Do base-of-pyramid consumers value privacy of their financial data? How might these concerns impact uptake for new financial services and delivery channels? Share your insight from the field in the comments section.

The Implications of Data Tracking on Financial Inclusion

This debate over internet data tracking has important implications for financial inclusion and in particular new channels like mobile banking that are expanding access to finance to consumers in low-access markets. Some see the end business model for these channels as providing low-cost or free services to consumers, making their profits instead by selling their data to companies looking to offer these consumers tailored products. In this post, we present two different viewpoints from Rafe Mazer, who focuses on financial consumer protection, and Sarah Rotman, who focuses on product innovation.

Regulation Spurs Innovation in the Philippines

More and more policymakers are now recognizing that financial exclusion is a risk to political stability and impedes economic advancement, and that financial inclusion measures can complement, not undermine, financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection.

Pyramids and Ponzis: Financial Scams in Developing Countries

There are many different flavors of financial crime. Often, highly visible ponzi or pyramid schemes occur in developed countries. But emerging economies are not immune to these problems.

Five Elements of A Social MFI

MFIs have the potential to go well beyond financial inclusion, and many do so by combining financial services with other non-financial interventions in coordinated programs to eliminate poverty and its manifestations.

Consumer Lending and Overindebtedness in Latin America

In Latin America household debt levels have been rising in recent years. Increased consumer debt level can in part be expected with growing economies. However, in several markets these debt levels may be leading large groups of consumers towards overindebtedness, and could pose a risk to economic growth, household well-being, and financial institutions with significant levels of consumer debt in their portfolios. This post examines some interventions underway to better understand the phenomenon of consumer lending and its implications.

Scammed: Pyramids and the Financial Inclusion Agenda

Large-scale financial crimes such as pyramid and ponzi schemes that promise high returns on dubious investments are always big news. Clearly they can lead to devastating losses for consumers, the great majority of whom typically lose all the money they invest. This in turn can threaten gains in financial inclusion by eroding potential new consumers’ confidence in the formal financial system.

Are You Getting Your Share? Revenue Protection in Mobile Money

Mobile money has had bad press lately for fraud-related cases. Most of the reported cases were either the result of internal employees misusing the system to cause operator losses or fraudsters trying to scam unsuspecting users. There is another angle that rarely gets any press—when users or agents abuse the platform and use it in rogue ways that it was never intended.

Towards Behaviorally-informed Financial Consumer Protection

Behavioral economics is the science of human decision-making and how people’s biases and weaknesses can lead them to make harmful economic decisions.

MFI Shareholders And Directors Can Help Achieve Social Goals

As MFIs try to unravel industry expectations on social performance, there is often a missing piece in MFIs’ internal functioning.

Does Client Protection Matter to Clients?

What do microfinance clients think about client protection? Do client protection principles really matter to them?

The Promises of Evidence-based Consumer Protection Polices

The expansion in credit and other financial products worldwide holds great promise to allow families to invest durable goods or human capital, or simply smooth consumption over time.

Getting Providers to Think about Client Protection

Important reforms are taking place today aiming to strengthen confidence and responsible practices in (micro) finance. However, financial authorities are not the only ones making efforts to build effective and complete frameworks to ensure responsible finance.