Recent Blogs
Blog
Driving Fast on Indian Country Roads: Learning from the Crisis
Investors all the way up the value chain of microfinance funding can do a lot to support a safe road to financial inclusion.Blog
Over-Indebtedness and Impact
We should not expect the over-indebtedness definition to solve the impact debate just in passing by.Blog
Over-Indebtedness and “Unacceptable Sacrifices”
When we talk about “over-indebtedness,” we usually assume that it’s something that ought to happen pretty rarely if credit is being delivered responsibly.Blog
Microfinance Over-Indebtedness
Whether to protect the social impact on customers or the institutional viability of MFIs, over-indebtedness is crucial to all parties involved.Blog
Highlights and Headlines for January 2011
The news wires have been busy with the recent announcement of partnerships and joint ventures in the Indian branchless banking market. India’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India, announced a joint venture with the mobile operator Bharti Airtel to offer mobile banking. Meanwhile, India’s largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank Ltd, announced its tie-up with Vodafone Essar to bank the unbanked via the mobile phone.Blog
The Lurking Challenge of Activating the Inactive Customer
In the past year, several high-profile branchless banking deployments have publicized the fact that they’ve reached more than one million users. Yet what is never publicized in press releases or speeches is the very low number of active users in most deployments. In a recent CGAP survey, 64% of mobile money managers indicated that less than 30% of their registered users are active, and active rates of less than 10% are not uncommon.Blog
Flying Blind on Over-indebtedness?
The point is not to assert that we have a generalized problem with over-indebted microborrowers. The point is that for most markets we simply don’t know.Blog
Are We Over-Indebting Poor Clients? A Challenge for Microcredit
How much do we really know about levels of over-indebtedness, or even what is a reasonable level of debt for a poor household to carry?Blog
Best of the Microfinance Blog 2010
It’s inevitable that a review of the year would highlight the dramatic turn of events in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, as well as other fundamental issues about the provision of financial services for the poor that emerged in such stark light in 2010.Blog
Tackling Fraud in Mobile Banking
CGAP recently surveyed 11 mobile operators to help them better understand how they can ensure that their mobile banking services are not used for money laundering or terrorism financing as well as preventing incidents of fraud against the company.Blog
A Country with a Last Name: Haiti Cherie
The financial hit of losing fixed assets like buildings and equipment and writing-off loans, the difficulty of keeping strong credit discipline with the influx of not-always-so-smart subsidies, the offer of higher salaries to staff by relief organizations and NGOs, and the short attention span of funders for long-term institution building are all real challenges.Blog
Haiti: Could Mobile Banking Be A Legacy of the Earthquake?
Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of the terrible earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. While much of the global aid community was focused on disaster response and establishing humanitarian camps for the displaced, there was also a desire to start putting in place financial systems that could be used to help both the immediate aid efforts as well as to establish sustainable long-term financial services for all Haitians.Blog
Legally, How Young Is Too Young to Open a Savings Account?
In most countries, youth under the age of 18 are typically prevented from independently opening a savings account because few banks are willing to offer any financial services without requiring a signed contract.Blog
10 Highlighted Posts from the CGAP Technology Blog from 2010
With 2010 now behind us, we’ve done a quick review of our blog posts over the last year. There were a lot of interesting topics discussed both by CGAP and guest bloggers.Blog
SHGs for the Poor; MFIs for the Non-Poor
The focus of concern in the recent past, and leading up to the Andhra Pradesh microfinance crisis, has been the risk to commercialized microfinance organizations or MFI-NBFCs.Blog
Is Microfinance Research as Bad as Medical Research?
Microfinance research has its own set of concerns.Blog
Shaking One’s Faith in RCTs?
Gold-standard” randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are not immune: 25 percent of published RCT results are subsequently convincingly refuted.Blog
The Alternatives to Mobile Money
Mobile money often begins with a customer withdrawing cash in a store in his or her community, or sending money directly from their mobile money account to a relative living far away.Blog
Highlights and Headlines: December 2010
In our last post for 2010, let’s recap what we’ve been discussing and share some headlines from around the globe.Blog