News

Call for Expression of Interest: Financial Inclusion 2.0

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 24, 2023 – CGAP today launched a call for expressions of interest for partners to collaborate on improving the industry’s understanding of financial inclusion outcomes. We are looking for organizations that have access to substantial amounts of data linking the use of financial services to customer outcomes. 

The last two decades have seen a growing body of evidence that access to and usage of financial services can contribute to positive outcomes for individuals, households, enterprises and even societies and economies in developing countries. CGAP itself extensively reviewed this evidence in a project from 2018-2020. 

However, the existing studies do not allow us to distinguish broadly under which circumstances different financial services have a positive, neutral, or negative impact on development outcomes. CGAP has launched a three-year project, Financial Inclusion 2.0 aimed at providing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the impact of inclusive financial services. A central part of this initiative will involve a deep dive into evidence on financial inclusion outcomes for up to two financial services and a limited range of customer categories.  

To enable the project to undertake this deep dive, we are looking to partner with several organizations who are collecting – or have recently collected – substantial amounts of data on customer outcomes. The organizations are likely to be impact investors, development finance institutions, donors, financial services providers (FSP), fintechs or mobile network operators (MNO) or central banks. 

Through the proposed partnerships, participating organizations and CGAP will use the data to explore some of the most innovative analytical methods that help explain when, how, and for whom financial services are more likely to lead to positive customer outcomes. This knowledge will be used to inform FSP practices, funder strategies, as well as government policies and regulations that more effectively promote sustainable development goals. 

Selected partners will: 

  1. Drive innovation in the sector. Become a thought partner in pioneering new approaches that will pave the way to designing financial services that lead to positive outcomes for individuals, households, enterprises, societies, and economies. 
  2. Raise their profile. Elevate the organization’s profile in the global financial inclusion community by joining leading industry players in this initiative.  
  3. Be among the first to learn and apply insights from this project. Tap into CGAP’s industry-wide learning community and seize the opportunity to gain deep insights from this collaborative learning journey. 

CGAP, as neutral and independent think-tank wholly focused on identifying innovations that promote financial inclusion, will convene through this project several leading public and private organizations funding and shaping efforts to increase the positive impacts of financial services. The lessons derived from partners’ experience will be presented to these leading organization aiming to influence their uptake of recommendations developed. 

In addition, CGAP will cover the costs of recruiting top data analytical experts, who will work hand-in-had with selected partners to analyse their data and distil insights with the highest relevance for partners’ own workplans and objectives. 

Selection Criteria 

The profile of an ideal partner is likely to include the following features: 

  1. The organization is a financial service provider, fintech, MNO, or an impact investor, development finance institution, donor or central bank that supports, or has recently supported, one of these organizations. Any type of organization that believes they have data as described above is welcome to apply. 
  2. The organization has access to substantial amounts of data and/or unpublished studies (including the raw data on which the studies were based) on outcomes from low-income customers’ use of inclusive financial services, including information on customer profiles, the local context where these customers are located and other factors relating to their use of financial services. 
  3. The organization is willing to share the data and studies with CGAP and any provider CGAP commissions to conduct analysis, subject to agreed confidentiality protocols. 
  4. Be willing to document lessons of the partnership in CGAP’s knowledge products and website. 
  5. The organization sees mutual benefit in partnering with CGAP for the 2–3-year duration of the project. There will be no payment by CGAP for access to the data and other partnership commitments. 

Timeline 

Phase 1: Submit an Expression of Interest form by November 24, 2023. 

Phase 2: CGAP and an independent Technical Advisory Group will evaluate all submissions against the criteria for an ideal partner described above. Following the evaluation, CGAP will make the final selection of partners.  

Phase 3: CGAP and invited partners can discuss the terms and conditions of the partnership to ensure it meets the requirements of each party. 

Key Documents 

  • Terms of reference: detailed information about the call for expressions of interest, including selection criteria and application process. 
  • Expression of interest form: interested organizations can apply using this form. 

Please send any questions to Karina Broens Nielsen knielsen1@worldbank.org.