CGAP
Annual Report 2022
A world where poor people, especially women, can capture opportunities and build resilience through financial services.
Letter From The CEO
The world has been forced to confront its fragility during FY22. Amid the continuing pandemic, increasing conflict, food shortages, energy disruptions, and a succession of natural disasters and heat waves that have been triggered by intensifying climate change, CGAP has continued to work with our partners, funders, governments and financial-service providers to advance financial inclusion. Together, we have sought to help fix systemic financial market flaws that prevent more inclusive finance, and to develop and refine the tools that the world’s poor, especially women, need to increase their incomes, improve their livelihoods, and become more resilient to these economic shocks.
During my first six months as CEO of CGAP, the world’s increased fragility has underscored the urgency of building a world that is more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and where individuals, households and communities are more resilient. As studies by the United Nations, the World Bank and other international organizations have documented, millions of people have fallen into poverty since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, reversing decades of steady progress and momentum. Economic polarization between the wealthiest and the poorest has also intensified amid the pandemic-era contraction of the global economy. Moreover, despite a narrowing of the financial inclusion gender gap, women and girls remain disproportionately affected by increased fragility, resulting in further gender-based (socio)economic inequalities.
Advancing financial inclusion remains an indispensable part of the solution. It involves not just broadening access to financial services, but also ensuring that those services provide tangible utility (that is, practical benefits and positive outcomes) for the poor and their communities by creating new income opportunities for individuals and by strengthening society’s resilience. Strengthening inclusion also delivers particular benefits to women, because providing them with access to capital, savings and other financial services promotes opportunities for economic participation and tends to benefit the entire household and community more so than with men. Financial inclusion also contributes to a world that is more resilient and greener, because it provides the poor and the vulnerable with vital tools to protect themselves against, and to recover from, economic and environmental shocks, as well as to adopt greener solutions.
Spurred in part by the pandemic, societies and economies have continued to digitize rapidly throughout the last year and the next wave of digital financial services has also accelerated. This has brought tremendous opportunities that can be leveraged to accelerate progress in the breadth and depth of financial inclusion, i.e., in the number of people who have access to formal financial services, and in the variety of financial products they have access to.
But it has also come along with new and quickening consumer risks that need to be monitored and managed. CGAP has renewed its focus on fostering responsible digital finance ecosystems and we will continue working with all our stakeholders to ensure that these ecosystems are customer-centric, and are implemented in close collaboration by capable stakeholders.
While good news has been hard to find this past year, the release of the World Bank’s Global Findex in June provided new evidence that the financial inclusion sector’s efforts have been bearing fruit. As the pre-eminent worldwide measurement of financial inclusion, the Global Findex found that, based on 2021 data, the average rate of account ownership in developing economies has increased by 8 percentage points, from 63% to 71%, since the previous round of data had been collected and published in 2017. Remarkably, this increase has been widespread across dozens of developing economies. It is a stark contrast to the trend that had been documented between 2011 to 2017, when most of the newly banked adults lived in just two countries: China and India. The gender gap in financial inclusion across developing economies has also reduced by 3 percentage points, from 9 to 6% - another remarkable sign of progress.
The latest Global Findex data are certainly encouraging, yet a great deal of work remains to be done. Our challenge now is to build on the strong recent momentum to maximize the practical utility that financial inclusion brings to the poor, especially in the context of the many challenges they face in the current global context, while redoubling our efforts to ensure that financial services become accessible to the millions of people who remain unbanked or underserved.
I am proud of the work that CGAP has done during FY22, ranging from such areas as G2P (Governments to People) payment systems to improving livelihoods of digital workers and rural women through financial inclusion, to improving access to finance for microenterprises, and to understanding the nature of social norms that in many places prevent women from accessing financial services. In addition, we have started new projects on the role of inclusive finance in fragile contexts and in addressing climate change. Across the entire range of CGAP’s agenda, we continued to deliver research-driven, evidence-based insights and new knowledge to a wide range of stakeholders, who are now focused on building more inclusive economies, more resilient societies, and a more sustainable planet.
I have also greatly valued meeting with and learning from many of CGAP’s members, partners, and other stakeholders during my initial months as CEO. Our conversations are helping shape CGAP’s next five-year strategy, which comes at a very important moment for global development and financial inclusion. I look forward to continuing these conversations in the coming months — and to ensuring that CGAP continues to play a forward-looking role that helps the entire financial inclusion community leverage the rapid pace of digitization. By doing so, our community will help equip the poor with the financial tools they need to improve their incomes and their resilience as they confront intensifying global challenges.
Sophie Sirtaine
CEO, CGAP
Sophie Sirtaine, CEO, CGAP
Sophie Sirtaine, CEO, CGAP
A Global Context Marked
by Crisis and Fragility
Underscoring how fragile our world has become, the global economy has endured multiple, simultaneous blows over the past year, threatening to abruptly reverse decades of hard-won economic and social progress and widening the divide between the world’s richest and poorest. In the face of these challenges, financial inclusion is crucial to enable the poor to prepare for, withstand, and recover. Those priorities are especially important for women, who continue to be disproportionately excluded from socioeconomic opportunity and exposed to shocks emanating from our changing climate. In this context, fulfilling CGAP’s agenda has become more important than ever.
Responding to Today's Crises, Anticipating Tomorrow's Challenges
CGAP’s work during Fiscal Year 2022 continued to focus on how financial inclusion advances three pivotal outcomes: enabling poor people to build resilience, access essential services, and capture economic opportunities.
Building Resilience
During this period of intense crises – when private-sector providers, public-sector agencies and social innovators have been hard-pressed to respond to urgent human needs, and as consumer risks have intensified – CGAP has worked to strengthen consumer protection. Three major projects in this area during Fiscal Year 2022 included: (i) delivering a comprehensive framework and analysis on the evolving nature and scale of consumer risks in the area of digital financial services; (ii) developing a guide to measure and monitor customer outcomes in financial services; and (iii) launching a Market Monitoring Toolkit to help financial and consumer protection supervisors to promptly identify and address financial consumer risks. The toolkit is already being used by financial consumer protection authorities in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal with much interest from authorities in India, Indonesia and South Africa, and it is especially valuable in evolving digital finance markets where vulnerable consumers often face heightened risks. CGAP’s research on consumer risks from digital financial services was explicitly cited by the Bank Indonesia as it said that digital finance inclusion was one of the main priorities of Indonesia's G20 Presidency in 2022.
Working with local and international partners, CGAP specialists developed and piloted a consumer protection initiative – the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) Digital Finance Consumer Protection Laboratory (The Lab). The Lab is a research project that helps regional authorities, consumer associations, and relevant national bodies analyze digital finance consumer risks and take appropriate action. It also supports providers to embed a customer-centric culture and promotes dialogue among stakeholders.
CGAP undertook research and development work to update its understanding of how evolving forces like globalization, digitization, and climate change are affecting the resilience of the world’s poor and how inclusive finance can help to strengthen that resilience. Building on that research, CGAP launched two new projects exploring how inclusive financial services can help poor people navigate some of the biggest systemic challenges they face: fragility and climate change.
Accessing Essential Services
With its work in the off-grid energy sector having concluded in July 2021, CGAP undertook exploratory work in FY22 to improve understanding of the opportunities for inclusive financial services to improve poor people’s access to essential services. The research found that financial services can promote access to high quality education, housing, and healthcare services, among other essential services. They are especially effective when they are combined with public- and private-sector efforts to address the market failures that often constrain access.
Arete / Yunaidi Joepoet / World Bank
Arete / Yunaidi Joepoet / World Bank
Generating Income
CGAP teams continued several initiatives to increase understanding of how financial inclusion could improve income-generating opportunities for three types of workers who together make up the majority of the world’s poor: micro-entrepreneurs and their employees, women in rural agricultural livelihoods, and platform workers. For example, CGAP produced new analyses to help financial services providers, funders, and regulators better understand the different segments of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE) as well as specific segments of platform workers, with a focus on their unique needs from financial services and products. CGAP also produced initial guidance on pathways for digitization of microfinance institutions to facilitate growth and resilience of institutions that serve the MSE sector globally.
CGAP’s work on income generation also contained a specific focus on formal and informal income-generating opportunities for women. This included studying trends in informal online commerce; exploring the opportunities and challenges facing women platform workers and sellers; and bringing a deeper analysis to the constraints facing women in rural and agricultural livelihoods (WIRAL). Much of this work is rooted in a nuanced understanding of women’s lives and livelihoods. CGAP continued to investigate prevailing social norms that limit women’s uptake and usage of financial services, providing guidance to funders and market facilitators in designing interventions that consider and address these norms. These norms are currently being tested by several funders and market facilitators in six countries.
During FY22, CGAP launched a series of new pilot partnerships with different types of financial-services providers to explore challenges and potential solutions in serving platform workers, gender transformative business models serving WIRAL, the innovative provision of financial services for MSEs, and digitization among microfinance institutions. These efforts complemented existing pilots focused on expanding Cash-in/Cash-out (CICO) rural agent networks, financial inclusion use cases for different data sources, and improving financial services for women with rural and agricultural livelihoods.
Spotlight on Digitization's Role in Responding to Crisis
The latest Global Findex and the GSMA State of the Industry Report revealed rapid growth in financial accounts (including mobile money), driven in part by the broader digitization of society, work and financial systems, along with the need to receive pandemic support payments. This continuing trend of digitization has created enormous opportunities for further increasing poor people’s access to, use of, and utility from financial services. However, there are significant variances between regions and while the usage of digital accounts is growing, it still lags well behind total account ownership.
Throughout FY22, CGAP focused its work on understanding how digital business models and innovations are shaping financial services and what such trends mean for the future of financial inclusion. This included, for example, analysis of the implications for financial inclusion of the modularization of the financial system and embedded finance.
Digitization has also enabled governments to streamline the process of getting money into the accounts of people who are in urgent need – such Government-to-People (G2P) payments have been especially important during the pandemic-stricken past three years. In partnership with the World Bank and others, CGAP has continued providing technical assistance on G2P in 11 countries: Lebanon, Bangladesh, Sudan, Zambia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Niger and Burkina Faso, Peru, Mexico, and Malawi. In addition, CGAP has helped key development partners to incorporate G2P choice in the way they think about or implement G2P payments. These include the World Food Program, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Better than Cash Alliance, and the World Bank.
In parallel, CGAP continued its work to expand Cash-in/Cash-out (CICO) rural agent networks, which serve as a crucial interface for many people between cash-based local economies and digital financial services. In FY22, CGAP launched a new knowledge hub called “Channel” that provides research and findings on topics related to agent networks, CICO, and distribution of digital financial services in rural areas. This includes insight into the role that agents can play to foster greater women’s financial inclusion and how this can be optimized. Insights from the project are supporting stakeholders in 6 countries to improve their agent network data, models, and regulation. For example, in Colombia, CGAP is supporting Banca de las Oportunidades (the government’s financial inclusion agency) to generate a granular understanding of the percentage of the population that can use agents and to identify new areas for viable network expansion based on economic activity, financial needs, or merchant networks. CGAP has also partnered with Digital Frontiers Institute to deliver an e-learning course, training 62 mid-level officers from DFS providers, policy agencies, and regulatory bodies from 14 countries in 3 continents about good practices related to rural agent networks. Further training will be conducted in FY23.
In addition, CGAP’s work in enabling inclusive and safe data ecosystems within financial services has informed the development of policies or regulations in the Philippines, Chile, and Peru.
Strengthening Global Partnerships and Ecosystems for Inclusive Finance
CGAP works closely with financial inclusion stakeholders including CGAP members (more than 30 leading development organizations), market facilitators, industry bodies and development institutions to accelerate and scale learning and change.
This leverage-for-scale model is built on partnerships, but also an understanding of the barriers that partners may face in translating CGAP’s learning, knowledge and insights into national or global-level initiatives. These constraints may include operational knowledge, internal capacity, and incentives. CGAP engages partners in a variety of ways to help facilitate the development of mechanisms that address these constraints. These range from leadership of, or participation in, working groups for partner organizations, board membership, guidance and advisory support, collaborative projects, joint events, publications, and knowledge sharing.
In FY22, CGAP’s scaling for impact model included: (i) contributing insights and analyses to the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion in relation to an Implementation Guide for Digital Financial Services; and (ii) trend analysis and guidance to funders and sector-support organizations on such topics as the needs of women platform workers, CICO network development, diagnosing and addressing gender norms, and funding flows that affect financial inclusion.
In addition in FY22, developed a Financial Inclusion Navigator, designed to help funders assess their organizational strengths and weaknesses in relation to advancing financial inclusion. CGAP successfully piloted the Navigator with the AFD Group.
Knowledge Sharing Platforms and Communities
Knowledge-sharing efforts and collaborative partnerships remain at the heart of CGAP’s agenda and are core to its mission. The knowledge-sharing platform FinDev Gateway and the FinEquity community of practice for women’s financial inclusion continued to reach a wide range of practitioners and researchers. In response to strong demand, FinEquity ALC, which is extending and deepening the community among practitioners en América Latina y el Caribe, grew exponentially in its first year.
Looking Ahead
CGAP continuously monitors economic and societal trends and explores emerging issues to understand how they interconnect with financial inclusion – whether as opportunities, risks, or evolving needs.
In the coming year, in anticipation of its new strategy for the years 2023-2027, CGAP anticipates that its exploratory work will relate to several broad areas:
· advancing inclusive insurance given changes in technology, business models, and market dynamics, and the increasing risks in the global environment
· exploring the evidence of the impact of micro-credit on beneficiaries, and identifying solutions to existing issues
· exploring ways that inclusive finance can help strengthen food security – particularly as intensifying climate-related impacts stress agricultural producers, workers, and processors, particularly women
· working with stakeholders to build understanding of how inclusive sustainable finance can better support global and regional development goals.
Looking ahead to CGAP’s medium- and longer-term objectives, FY23 is the final year of the “CGAP VI” strategy. As it develops the next strategy (“CGAP VII”), CGAP will continue to consult widely with members, partners, policy-focused groups, and other experts in finance and development. CGAP’s aim, as always, will be to identify existing gaps and emerging opportunities to build more inclusive and sustainable financial market systems that increase access, use, and utility for the poor.
Global Reach and Influence
Documentations and Charts
FY22 Financial Statement
CGAP is a trust-funded consortium of 32 members with a mandate of advancing access to financial services to the world’s poor. It is housed in the World Bank’s Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Global Practice. The World Bank, on behalf of other member donors, has legal, financial, and administrative oversight of CGAP. CGAP’s initiatives span more than one fiscal year. CGAP follows the World Bank’s fiscal year, which ends on June 30.
These financial statements include a FY22 Financial Update, FY22 Member Contribution Update and accompanying notes. They are unaudited. Internal audits are performed by World Bank Group Quality Assurance. CGAP also participates in the World Bank Group’s single audit exercise annually.
Key Highlights for Fiscal Year 2022
Donor Contributions. Total donor contributions received in FY22 were $17.8 million, a decrease from $27.2 million in FY21. CGAP bilateral members provided 39% of the total FY21 contributions, while foundations provided 44%. Multilaterals provided 15%, and DFIs provided 2% of the total funds required to implement CGAP’s work program in FY22
Operating Expenses. CGAP’s FY22-end expenses were $23.5 million, or 4% under the originally approved budget of $24.5 million. Staff costs represented 56% of the total costs, slightly less than in FY21. In FY22, CGAP’s expenses were funded 82% by core funding and 18% from preferenced contributions.
Financial Position. CGAP maintained a solid financial position. As of June 30, 2022, CGAP has received $86.5 million in cash for the period July 2018-June 2022 with receivables (based on the signed member agreements) of $15.7 million. Combined, this represents $102.2 million in secured or pledged funding for the CGAP VI Strategy cycle (or approximately 85% of the projected CGAP VI budget of $120.7 million). There is also $34.6 million in the high-probability funding pipeline, the majority of which is dedicated to the CGAP VII cycle. CGAP is actively working to secure the funding needed to successfully complete planned activities in FY23 and ensure a smooth transition to FY24.
1. Basis of Accounting
CGAP financial update is prepared on a cash accounting basis.
Revenue from donor pledges is recognized when written notification of a donor’s intent to process the grant is received. In most cases, pledges are fulfilled during the fiscal year in which they were made. Sometimes they are received in the following year(s).
These (unaudited) financial statements are prepared on a historical cost convention and are denominated in United States dollars.
2. Contributions from Donors – Core and Preferenced
Donor contributions (including pledges that have not yet been received but are being processed by the donor), interest income, and foreign exchange gains comprise CGAP’s revenues. Per CGAP’s charter, all members are expected to contribute core funding to carry out CGAP’s operations. Once donors have made core (unrestricted) contributions, they can make in exceptional cases a contribution limited to a specific purpose (preferenced). Amounts of donor contributions to CGAP’s core funds can be found in the table on CGAP Member Donor Contributions.
3. Interest Income
Interest Income is the interest received during the fiscal year on cash balances held.
4. Operating Expenses: Operating expenses are comprised of the following:
Staff Salaries and Benefits of direct-hire CGAP staff.
Consultant fees are costs related to the hire of individual CGAP consultants.
Travel are expenses related to delivery of corporate activities including inter alia participation in external events, CGAP-hosted meetings, etc.
Contractual/Firm services related to hiring of external companies.
Other Operating Expenses include all other expenses related to delivery of CGAP’s program, including those related to the organization of CG and ExCom Meetings, office and building expenses, telecommunications, office supplies, etc.
5. Operating Reserve
Operating Reserves are funds available for ongoing operations and future commitments. Since CGAP does not generate revenue, an operating reserve is maintained to cushion the potential effects of delays in member contributions and to allow an orderly wind-down of CGAP activities should members decide to discontinue CGAP's operations in its present form. CGAP’s practice is to target operating reserves at a level that would sustain at least 6 months of operating costs and contractual obligations, which is at estimated at $20 million. It is particularly important to have this reserve in place as CGAP moves from one strategy cycle to the next, as members generally provide their core contributions over the course of the first two years of a new strategy.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
(As of June 30, 2022)
Chair: Jason Lamb, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Juliet Anammah, Jumia, at-large
Bindu Ananth, Dvara Trust, at-large
Maha Bahou, Jordan Payments and Clearing Company (JO-PACC), at-large
Henri Dommel, UNCDF
Ola Sahlén, Sida
Fernando Maldonado, USAID
Christine Poursat, Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group
Mahesh Uttamchandani, World Bank
Sophie Sirtaine, ex-officio, CGAP CEO
CGAP COUNCIL OF GOVERNORS & REPRESENTATIVES
Bilaterals I
Denmark: Maike Schäfer
Germany: Ian Lachmund, Daniel Taras, Florian Henrich, Linnea Kreibohm, Judith Frickenstein
Italy: Francesco Capecchi
Norway: Kim Kristmoen and Nikolai Østråt Owe
Sweden: Ola Sahlén
Switzerland: Philippe Sas
Bilaterals II
Australia: Peta Mills and Selina Hughes
Canada: Philip Halliday and Manele Belghouar
Japan: Takumi Kunitake, Tomomi Uchikawa and Reiko Wakatsuki
Jersey: Simon Boas, Edward Lewis and Gilly Challinor
Luxembourg: Michel Haas and Paul Weber
The Netherlands: Sandra Louiszoon
Republic of Korea: Junki Min
United Kingdom: Rebecca Waghorn and Sian Parkinson
United States: Fernando Maldonado and Paul Nelson
Foundations
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Michael Wiegand, Jason Lamb, Daniel Radcliffe, and Deon Woods Bell
Credit Suisse: Laura Hemrika and Andrina Schwartz
Flourish: Arjuna Costa and Stella Klemperer
Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth: Shamina Singh, Payal Dala, Arturo Franco, Leslie Meek-Wohl, Erica Matsumoto and Ali Schmidt-Fellner
Mastercard Foundation: Nathalie Gabala and Mercy Mutua
MetLife Foundation: Krishna Thacker and Tia Hodges
Development Finance Institutions
AFD Group: Christine Poursat, Jérémy Brault, Sandrine Bannwarth, Laurence Bottin, Pauline Angoso and Léo Eugène
British International Investment: Joe Huxley
CDC Group: Machal Karim
European Investment Bank: Sonja Mohnen, Isabelle Van Grunderbeeck and Emma Paul
FMO—Dutch Development Bank: Jeroen Harteveld and Esther Njoroge
IDB Lab: Irene Arias, Sergio Navajas and Terence Gallagher
International Finance Corporation: Martin Holtmann
Investment Fund for Developing Countries: Morten Elkjær and Barbara Vieyra Marcussen
KfW Bankengruppe: Matthias Adler, Carmen Colla and Teresa Pace
Multilateral Members
African Development Bank: Stefan Nalletamby, Sheila Okiro and Robert Zegers
European Commission: Laura Atienza and Christian Crivari
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD): Marc de Sousa-Shields
United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) / UNDP: Henri Dommel and John Tucker
World Bank
Indermit Gill and Mahesh Uttamchandani
About CGAP
CGAP is a global partnership of more than 30 leading development organizations that works to advance the lives of poor people, especially women, through financial inclusion. Using action-oriented research, we test, learn and share knowledge intended to help build inclusive and responsible financial systems that enable poor people to capture economic opportunities, access essential services, and build resilience, including in the context of climate change. We research and experiment to establish proofs of concept and extract actionable insights that help our partners implement solutions in the marketplace and take them to scale. In short, we influence through evidence. By doing so, we hope to advance broader development goals and contribute to more prosperous, equal, resilient, sustainable economies and societies.
www.cgap.org
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