Searching: Blogs

Is Behavioral Finance Relevant to Policymaking?

There is growing interest in—and evidence of—the role that behavioral economics can play in improving consumer financial protection policies.

Exclusion Costs: Financial Inclusion in the Arab World

Arab policymakers, who long regarded microfinance as charity for the poor, are realizing that a financial system that serves only 20 percent of the population is a key ingredient in the recipe for political instability.

Making Disclosure Work for Low-Income Financial Consumers

Consumer research supported by CGAP and others around the world is painting a similar picture – customers face many challenges in understanding the prices, terms and conditions of the financial services they use, and this lack of understanding carries very real economic consequences.

Financially Inclusive Ecosystems: The Roles of Government Today

Different products present different risks and delivery challenges, and it is unlikely that a single class of service providers will effectively provide all the products poor people need.

Can Self-Regulation Work to Protect Clients?

But what does this movement towards codes of conduct amongst microfinance associations mean from the policy perspective? Policymakers (and the rest of us) cannot count on the microfinance industry to handle client protection all on its own.

Time to Choose

We need to focus on the real underlying issue and thinking that it is commercialization that is the problem.

Consumer Insights into Disclosure

Disclosure and pricing transparency are important building blocks for countries looking to develop effective consumer protection regimes. They also are of particular importance for low-income populations, who often have lower levels of literacy and numeracy, and limited experience with formal financial products.

Financial Safety: In the Eyes of the User and Regulator

The perception that a financial institution is “safe” is perhaps not only a matter of whether it is regulated or solvent, but also whether it offers consumers a consistent, reliable experience.

MFIs Should Do Responsible Finance

Responsible finance is not just the responsibility of the MFIs. Other stakeholders have a role to play. These stakeholders should exhibit the same virtues that they demand of MFIs.

Consumer Protection? Ask the Consumer

The main objective of the diagnostic study undertaken in Senegal in early 2011 was to develop a better understanding of microfinance clients’ protection and suggest possible improvements.

Making Finance More Responsible

If you ask social investors whether responsible finance should be the “new normal” in microfinance, the answer is always yes.

Client Protection: Are We There Yet?

Since its launch, the Smart Campaign has made enormous strides toward ensuring that clients of microfinance would receive transparent, respectful, and prudent treatment.

What Does Research Tell Us about Consumer Protection?

Recent behavioral research on financial decision-making has demonstrated how we often rely on imperfect information and limited options to decide things like which bank has the best terms, whether we should save now and buy later, or maybe turn that extra cash into an investment.

Is Responsible Finance in Your DNA?

Responsible finance is a way of doing business – a never-ending process of adapting your products, processes and policies to keep your clients at the center.

Responsible Finance: The “New Normal”?

We should expect the great majority of microfinance providers, funders and others that are double bottom line institutions to be able to measure the extent to which they’re benefiting their clients and to use this information to improve services.

What Caused Mass Defaults in Karnataka, India

While the origins of mass defaults may be rooted in cultural and political considerations, in this post we focus solely on customer behaviour and the lending practices of MFIs that operate in these towns.

Drivers of Mobile Money Profitability

This post is the second in the series on “Five Business Case Insights on Mobile Money.” In the first post, we shared with you a detailed presentation on the five insights. Here we explain further the first three insights.

Some Insights into Over-indebtedness in India

Microfinance Institutions in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere in India are keen to avoid over-indebtedness or place clients in distress.

Branchless Banking Has a Volume Problem

CGAP’s Branchless Banking Database synthesizes a mass of data into a short 12-image “story” about what branchless banking is and the key hurdles we face in 2011. We’ve converted that into a three-part series, which we continue today.

Measuring Cross-indebtedness in Latin America

While over-indebtedness can be difficult to observe in practice, we can use simple surveys to estimate one proxy for over-indebtedness: cross-indebtedness, or the number of institutions from which the typical borrower has a loan.