Blog

The Microfinance Sector in Yemen

In Yemen, the microfinance sector in 2010 has made significant progress, with the number of active clients increasing by 100%.

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.

Linking Financial Behaviors to Product Development

The Financial Diaries methodology is increasingly recognized by financial service providers and analysts as a powerful method to collect sequential, spatial, and social network data on economic transactions, to pinpoint drivers of uptake and to analyze usage trends.

The Role Public Funders Can Play in Branchless Banking

Given the current momentum, is there a meaningful role that public funders can play without crowding out private investment?

Savings Groups

More than 5 million poor people around the world are members of Savings Groups that provide essential services to help manage their daily lives.

What Can We Learn From Selling Soap?

This post includes a detailed presentation of CGAP’s analysis of 23 firms from banking, microfinance, mobile, fast moving consumer goods, and Silicon Valley. It also describes the key features of three Product Labs which will be established by CGAP’s bank, telco and other partners.

Microfinance and the Arab Spring in Egypt

Revolutions that have occurred, or the so-called Arab Spring, in some of the Arab countries have had a direct impact on the microfinance industry, like all other sectors. However, the impact has differed from one country to another, according to the relevant background of each country.

Do We Need Pink Check Books?

Women think and behave differently than men when it comes to financial matters. These differences have major implications for product design and marketing strategy.

The Regulatory Framework for Microfinance in MENA, 2011

In order to meet the challenges, a well developed regulatory framework as well as a strong support structure for the MFIs in the region is core. Sound regulations will enable the sector to grow in a sustainable way.

From Microcredit to Microfinance: Ambitions for Tunisia

After the revolution of January 2011, Tunisians experienced poverty at a level far more critical than official statements had suggested. Microfinance has quickly been identified as one of the tools that can help reduce inequalities, address exclusion, and strengthen the country’s economic fabric.

FOROMIC 2011 – Pura Vida!

This pura vida spirit could also be used to describe the status of financial inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean, as the industry proactively pushes for product innovation to increase access and lower cost, while confronting challenges like overindebtedness and rural finance.

Segmenting the “Bottom of the Pyramid” in Mexico

Reaching the poor with a range of useful, convenient, and affordable financial services is challenging for all the reasons we know. In the context of Mexico, access has increased significantly in the past few years (nearly 60% of all households), and changes in regulation enabling correspondent banking are likely to bring the access barrier down even further.

Faster Horses or Better Insights?

Customers often can’t or won’t tell you what they want, so you must work to dig down to what they really need. Valuable services not only meet a deeply-felt need, they tackle a poorly met need.

What Does Focusing on the Client Really Mean?

Perhaps, we should start the conversation with family finances, how the poor generate their income, and the big expenses they incur along the way.

Customers – Especially Women – Drive Mobile Money

Tanzania is one of the fastest growing mobile money markets in the world. Today mobile telephone penetration is 49% according to Wireless Intelligence as of Q3 2011. There are four active mobile money businesses, the largest of which is Vodacom’s M-PESA which has over 2 million active users.

Credit Reporting and the Indian MFI Bill

For more than a decade stakeholders across the spectrum in countries around the world have pinned hopes on ‘just the right microfinance regulation’ solving problems only indirectly affected by regulatory policy.

Microcredit in a Changing Region

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been facing a series of unprecedented events in 2011, resulting in a great deal of change after over three decades of stagnant political dictatorship, uneven economic growth, and increased poverty.

The Case for Product Innovation in Branchless Banking

CGAP counted 22 branchless banking services with more than 1 million registered users; we also counted more than 70 others which have not reached that threshold (as of Q1 2011). That’s about a 1 in 4 “hit rate”.

Keeping Clients at the Center: An Art and a Science

The need to understand and stay focused on clients is frankly not revolutionary. Indeed, many would say that is exactly how microfinance started out.

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.