Searching: Research & Analysis

Banking Through Networks of Retail Agents

Access to financial services—whether in the form of savings, payments, credit, or insurance—is a fundamental tool for managing a family’s well-being and productive capacity.

Extending Financial Services with Banking Agents

This Brief provides a quick look at the growing use of banking agents to extend financial services to low-income and poor people.

The Early Experience with Branchless Banking

Branchless banking has great potential to extend the distribution of financial services to poor people who are not reached by traditional bank branch networks; it lowers the cost of delivery, including costs both to banks of building and maintaining a delivery channel and to customers of accessing services (e.g., travel or queuing times).

Being Able to Make (Small) Deposits and Payments, Anywhere

In this paper we put forth a vision in which people are able to make small deposits into their bank account through a variety of cash handling outlets right in their neighborhood.

Microfinance Banana Skins 2008

According to this new survey of the risks facing microfinance, completed at a time when the sector is undergoing profound changes, the greatest threats to the business lie in poor management and inadequate corporate governance.

An Analysis of Peru’s “Cajeros Corresponsales”

Most banks in Peru have tended to use banking agents fundamentally to shift low-value transactions away from the more costly branch channel and to extend the reach of their existing branches.

Regulating Transformational Branchless Banking

In a fast increasing number, policy makers and regulators in other developing and transition countries are embracing “transformational branchless banking”—the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and nonbank retail channels to reduce costs of delivering financial services to clients beyond the reach of traditional banking.

The True Cost of Deposit Mobilization

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) seem to be of two minds about the cost of mobilizing savings. In a recent CGAP study, the majority of institutions interviewed perceived deposits as the cheapest form of funding available, as well as stable, plentiful, and a valuable service to clients.

MFI Capital Structure Decision Making: A Call for Greater Awareness

This Brief summarizes the study's findings and makes recommendations about ways we can work toward optimizing MFI balance sheets.

Safe and Accessible: Bringing Poor Savers Into the Financial System

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, many financial institution managers and policy makers do not believe poor people save money. They tend to assume that poor people are “too poor to save,” that they prefer to consume rather than save excess income, or that when they do save it is only to access a loan.