Recent Blogs
Blog
Reaching Small Farmers Through Innovative Finance In Pakistan
In 2001, NRSP (National Rural Support Program) designed a research project to address the issues of access to finance and advisory services to small sugar cane farmers. The basic idea was to create an “out of box” microfinance model that threads together the small farmer, the MFI and the processor into a high impact value chain with high financial and social returns. The project “Sugarcane Production Enhancement Project” (the SPEP) focused on small poor farmers with a maximum land holding of around three acres, as well as share croppers and farmers who generally rent agriculture land from large land lords.Blog
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.Blog
Côte d’Ivoire: A Perfect Time for Mobile Money?
Côte d’Ivoire has seen its mobile money industry make significant progress in recent years. The latest results from the sector suggest good prospects moving forward. At the end of Q3 2012, there were 2.6 million registered mobile money clients across all providers in the market. This post explores the recent market dynamic in this west African country.Blog
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.Blog
Innovations in Islamic Microfinance for Small Farmers in Sudan
To enable financial inclusion for small farmers, the entire value chain needs to be understood and supported, and financial products have to be designed keeping in mind their unique needs. We at Bank of Khartoum believe that Islamic microfinance products can effectively reach small farmers in Sudan when customized to their needs.Blog
Can Retailers and MNOs Provide More Efficient Financial Services?
When it comes to financial inclusion, retail has been one of the late driving forces in Latin America. In the past, banks have been unable to cater to over 50% percent of households in the region. Retailers have filled some of this gap and have started offering formal financial services to millions of previously unbanked customers.Blog
Where The Wild Things Are: Measuring Market Development Progress
Being able to measure and demonstrate progress are critical issues as taxpayers and other funders of donors and DFIs require explanations and justifications of the use of their limited resources. A handful of donors are starting to experiment with different tools for measuring progress in agricultural and other non-financial markets. It is difficult work, especially when attempting to measure attributable and sustainable changes to a market system.Blog
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.Blog
Why And How Should We Measure Progress In Market Development?
With increasing scrutiny of aid budgets in donor countries, the pressures to prove impact of development programs are higher than ever before. It is relatively easy to assess impacts in a backward-looking fashion when there is already some record of progress, but measurement challenges are more daunting at the start of a program, when impact assessment needs to be forward-looking.Blog
The Savings Conundrum: Lessons from A Pack of Cards
The simple behavior around a pack of cards gives us an enormous amount of insight about how a financial product can be designed to accommodate a quest for surprise whilst saving.Blog
Re-Banking the De-Banked in Mexico
Earlier this year CGAP, in partnership with Bancomer, commissioned IDEO.org, the non-profit arm of the California firm known for its human-centered design methodology, to create a savings product that would meet the needs of low income Mexicans.Blog
What Is Keeping Kenya From Becoming More “Cash Lite”?
A couple of weeks ago, Daryl Collins and her team at BFA introduced granular, intra-day transaction data collected in the summer of 2011 across a sample of 61 urban and rural retail merchants in Kenya. The results starkly showed that cash still dominates the payment transactions in these areas, with mobile money representing being used for not even 1% of transactions. In this blog, they ask the question “What would move more customers and merchants to more cash-lite payment behavior?”Blog
Financial Literacy for Small Farmers in Kenya Via TV
In March of 2012, a new regional television program launched in Kenya which aims to provide information to millions of farmers on how to improve their incomes and livelihoods. Funded by DfID's AECF (the Africa Entrepreneurship Challenge Fund), "Shamba Shape-Up" profiles a farm each week and suggests improvements that demonstrate financial principles and teaches farmers how to grow more food, make more money and build better lives for their families.Blog
A Better Way to Deliver Aid
To increase the speed of delivery and put decision-making power into the hands of beneficiaries, the international aid community is transitioning away from the distribution of in-kind goods to the direct transfer of cash payments to assist those in need. The Visa Innovation Grants Program is taking this one step further by supporting innovation and implementation of electronic payments.Blog
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.Blog
Taking Market Development Approaches to Financial Access
How can aid agencies begin to ‘take’ market development thinking and practice into their efforts to enhance financial services for poor people? Drawing from wider experience, here are five basic starting points to consider.Blog
From Social Protection to Financial Inclusion and Beyond
The idea that linking social protection payments to financial inclusion initiatives can reduce poverty is gaining increasing traction. In February of this year, CGAP published a paper on Social Cash Transfers and Financial Inclusion. In April, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) held a workshop examining the potential of financially-inclusive electronic G2P payments. One of the core goals of the Better Than Cash Alliance, launched in September by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Citi, Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, UN Capital Development Fund, USAID, and Visa Inc., is to reduce the reliance on cash for G2P and other transfers in order to improve the effectiveness of aid.Blog
How Best Can We Listen to Clients?
Barring a few steadfast voices over the last two decades, the financial inclusion field as a whole has only started coming around to ‘client-centricity’ as compared to others in the development field or even commercial industries. Everyone seems to agree that the starting point is to understand clients better. But these discussions become about methods very quickly.Blog
OPIC and the Global Microfinance Industry
As the U.S. Government’s Development Finance Institution, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has a mandate to help channel private capital to address some of the world’s toughest development challenges. One of the core ways we carry out that mission is by working with microfinance institutions. In recent years, OPIC has tailored its financing and insurance products to better serve the microfinance sector.Blog