Recent Blogs
Blog
Letter to the Editor
A CGAP paper clearly acknowledges that randomized studies by Prof. Duflo and others have raised fundamental questions about the claim that microcredit raises incomes and consumption, lifting poor people out of poverty.Blog
What's the Impact of Loan Size in Microfinance?
People tend to see loan size as a rough proxy of client poverty, which appears to be more or less true as long as you say the word “rough” very emphatically.Blog
Haiti’s Graduation Pilot Final Evaluation,Promising Results
At the pilot stage, the program has demonstrated significant positive impact upon the lives of its members with 97% per cent of the 150 women that participated “graduating” out of the program.Blog
West Africa Switches on Mobile Money: Headlines for June 22, 2010
We’ve been saying for awhile that mobile money will be less compelling in places where good alternatives to cash already exist, for example, in developed markets such as North America. Despite that, the folks who look after how payments get cleared has opened a door for mobile.Blog
Dakar Dispatch: Mobile Money and Financial Inclusion
The regulatory questions around branchless banking are often not black and white, but usually gray. What is quite clear, however, is that the private sector is raring to go in many Francophone African markets, and policymakers need to be informed now more than ever on the appropriate ways to respond.Blog
India, Microfinance, and Technology
Back office management is a source of such stress for many MFIs that it’s exciting to see MFIs trying new and innovative ways of addressing these issues. Sahayata’s back office strategy includes not only technology, but also people and processes.Blog
The Other Side of the Interest Rate Argument
High interest rates is not a universal problem. In fact, China is facing the opposite issue: interest rates charged by MFIs are too low.Blog
CGAP Releases Pricing Tool for Mobile Banking for the Unbanked
A few weeks ago, CGAP released a study comparing the prices of 16 branchless banking pioneers and 10 traditional banks across eight use cases. We found that the average monthly cost of using a branchless banking service is $3.90 (PPP adjusted) compared with US$4.80 when using a traditional bank. The conclusion: branchless banking is cheaper than traditional banking, but the gap is not as wide as some may think.Blog
My Mobile, My Neighbor and $20: A Dispatch from the U.S.
For all the talk about financial services over mobile technology and our aspirations for a cashless society, it is striking to me how far the economies in the U.S. and Europe still have to go.Blog
CGAP Releases New Software Reviews
CGAP’s Software Reviews aim to help microfinance institutions (MFIs) make informed technology decisions by facilitating access to information on commercially available information systems (IS) products.Blog
How Responsible Are Microfinance Investors?
An overabundance of capital can trigger irresponsible actions or undue risk-taking on the part of investee companies.Blog
Mobile Banking: Agents as Mediators
Following on from last week’s post on the concept of ‘mediated use’ – asking someone to complete all or part of a task that the user is unable, or unwilling to do – how motivated are agents in helping customers complete all or some of the task?Blog
South-South Replication in Africa
A special session at the CGAP Annual Meeting explored the phenomenon of Greenfield banks and South-South replications in sub-Saharan Africa.Blog
Trickle Up: What’s Up Six Months after Graduation?
The Trickle Up Graduation Pilot in West Bengal is one of the most advanced sites in the CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Program—a global effort to understand how safety nets, livelihoods and microfinance can be sequenced to create pathways out of extreme poverty.Blog
Microfinance in 2010
2010 marks CGAP’s 15th anniversary, providing an opportunity to reflect on the state of microfinance today and CGAP’s role within it. Is microfinance a mature industry, or one still experiencing growing pains?Blog
Managed Chaos: Keeping Track of Agents
The key is pattern recognition. That’s where the color coding, scoring and sortability of FINO’s system comes into play.Blog
Can Branchless Banking Be Distributed Like Coca-Cola?
In India, a single distributor for a company like Coca-Cola (or Airtel or Nestle) works with several hundred retailers who sell Coca-Cola’s products. The distributor is responsible for selecting retailers, managing inventory, picking up/delivering cash and managing paperwork (e.g., for SIM registrations). Is it feasible for a distributor to add mobile banking to the other products they sell?Blog
India’s Doorstep Banking: FINO Starts Something New
FINO agents in Karnataka offer no-frill bank accounts from the State Bank of India (SBI). Some agents also sell insurance products.Blog
Should There Be Another CGAP, This Time for SME?
The list of reasons to support SME starts with the well-documented role of such enterprises in job creation, and goes on from there.Blog