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> Posted by Amit Jain, Principal, Global Thought Leadership, MasterCard Advisors
The Financial Inclusion 2020 project at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. Accordingly, this blog series will spotlight financial inclusion efforts around the globe, share insights coming out of the creation of a roadmap to full financial inclusion, and highlight findings from research on the “invisible market.”
As an avid advocate of financial inclusion, I am deeply saddened by the fact that several hundred years after the first bank opened, 50 percent of the global adult population still lacks access to formal financial services.
The good news is that this may not be the case any longer. So I eagerly read the recent paper from Elisabeth Rhyne and Sonja Kelly from the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion that talks about how growing incomes could lead to growing inclusion. I am glad that the authors have brought this phenomenon to the forefront.
I agree that rising incomes could be a key catalyst for elevating financial inclusion globally. I have experienced firsthand the tectonic shift in the income profiles and demand for financial services in India reflected in data from the United Nations Statistics Division. It shows that the percent of the population below the poverty line in India has dropped from 45 percent in 1994 to less than 30 percent in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Bindu Ananth and Amit Shah, President of IFMR Trust and Head of Business Intelligence at IFMR Rural Finance
Bindu and Amit co-edited the recently published book Financial Engineering for Low-Income Households. An edited compilation of articles, the book focuses on using financial engineering to design financial services for low-income households. A Q&A with Bindu and Amit follows.
For someone unfamiliar with the field, how would you describe financial engineering, and to what extent do you see financial engineering being applied by retail providers serving low-income households today?
In the Foreword to the book, Dr. Nachiket Mor, a mentor to us at IFMR Trust, observes that the retail finance industry the world over has gone in the direction of standardized products and transferring the burden of decision-making away from bankers and to the consumer. This is also true of providers serving low-income households. This, we think, misses the power of finance. The motivation of this book is to systematically compile principles from finance and economics theory and apply them to the context of design and delivery of financial services for low-income households. We use the term financial engineering in this context.
Do you think that this framework addresses any misapprehensions, gaps, or problems in the way that financial products are currently designed for low-income households?
I think it is safe to say that there is negligible design today – largely because so much of the energy and focus has been on sheer distribution. Just getting a small loan delivered in a remote context is hard enough, leave alone worrying about whether the loan is structured well to suit the customer. This book lays out an approach for a new generation of providers, who are concerned about distributing well-designed products to meet client needs, not just any product.
One of the goals of your book is to provide an understanding of the risk-reward trade-offs facing low-income households. In your experience, what is the most widespread risk barrier, perceived or actual, preventing greater financial services adoption in India?
I think one of the big challenges that we worry a lot about is that so much of the portfolio of low-income households is dominated by physical assets (land, house, and livestock). These are typically low return, high risk, and highly correlated with their human capital. The opportunities to do better than that are therefore infinite.
> Posted by Andrea Horak, Program Coordinator, CFI
The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.
When you hear the word “democracy,” you probably think of equality, elected representatives, voting rights, and so on. You probably also think of specific contexts. In the United States, for example, many of its citizens pride themselves on living in a democratic country. But what about democracy in business? Or more specifically, democracy in microfinance institutions (MFIs)? Should democracy extend to the decision-making in their governing boardrooms?
Although good governance has become a top priority for microfinance investors, donors, and regulators worldwide (CGAP’s Microfinance Gateway lists it as a Hot Topic), the structures of boardrooms and views on governance vary from institution to institution, country to country, and continent to continent. None of these structures, however, seem to be “democratic” in the way we define the word – representative of all parties involved. For example, as we covered in a previous blog post, the Anglo-American model of governance empowers CEOs to also serve as chair of their corporate board, which can result in management dominance of decision-making.
At the CMEF’s most recent meeting in April in Lima, Peru, a portion of the discussion was dedicated to asking why the client voice is not heard in the boardroom. Although it was generally agreed that financial institutions should strive to incorporate clients at the governance level in some way, the response on “how” varied greatly.
> Posted by Center Staff
On Tuesday, in conjunction with the release of our second FI2020 Mapping the Invisible Market report, Growing Income, Growing Inclusion: How Rising Incomes at the Base of the Pyramid Will Shape Financial Inclusion, we hosted a live, interactive webcast with MasterCard. The webcast explored the relationship between rising incomes and financial inclusion, including the opportunity for inclusion presented by the emergence of the “vulnerable class.” The session also spotlighted the Mapping the Invisible Market interactive data tools (available here and here), as well as MasterCard’s work in supporting financial inclusion globally.
Hosted by MasterCard’s Nicole Ward, the webcast’s presenters were CFI’s Sonja Kelly and Elisabeth Rhyne, and MasterCard’s Tara Nathan. Here’s a few of the points that were made during the discussion.
- Rising incomes, changing demographics, advances in technology, and government engagement are factors that are coming together to further financial inclusion
- Global GDP has been growing for the past 30 years, with a projected increase from $61 trillion in 2010 to $85 trillion in 2020
- From 2010 to 2020, the annual income of the bottom 40 percent in low and middle income economies is projected to double, from $3.1 trillion to $5.8 trillion
- In many populous countries, the BOP will move into the vulnerable class in this decade
- At the country level, there is a strong correlation between income and financial inclusion, both in account ownership and account use
- There are many possible on-ramps to financial inclusion, including bill pay, G2P payments, no-frills accounts, and mobile money transfer
- The transition from informal to formal financial services depends on many factors, including income level, income flow, employment formality, and social relationships
- Incorporating the vast influx of new clients requires scaling up client protection and financial education
- MasterCard is working with the government of Nigeria on a national ID program to provide a single proof of identity that also has the ability to deposit, receive, withdraw, and pay
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly and Elisabeth Rhyne, Fellow and Managing Director, CFI
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. Accordingly, this blog series will spotlight financial inclusion efforts around the globe, share insights coming out of the creation of a roadmap to full financial inclusion, and highlight findings from research on the “invisible market.”
This post is based on research from the Mapping the Invisible Market project published in the paper Growing Income, Growing Inclusion by Sonja E. Kelly and Elisabeth Rhyne. The paper was released today, and can be downloaded at mapping.financialinclusion2020.org/growing-income-growing-inclusion.
The World Bank, UN, and The Economist are all talking about it: growing income around the world. The UN’s goal to halve the number of people living in poverty by 2015 has already been achieved, and the media frequently spotlights growth in emerging markets contrasted with reports of malaise in the EU and US economies. In low and middle-income economies, it isn’t just the wealthy or the well-connected who benefit from this growth. Real incomes are rising among the poor, moving hundreds of millions of people from extreme levels of poverty into levels at which they begin to have more income flexibility.
Over the course of this decade, the bottom two quintiles in many of the world’s most populous countries will see movement into and even beyond the “vulnerable class,” defined as having an income of $4 to $10 per day. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Alyssa Passarelli, Communications and Operations Assistant, the Smart Campaign
Sergio Guzmán conducting a Smart Assessor’s Training in Budva, Montenegro
The month of May was filled with many exciting events for the Smart Campaign. Smart Campaign director, Isabelle Barrès traveled to Guatemala and Bosnia and Herzegovina for two Client Protection Certification events (please see our last blog post). Smart Campaign Lead Specialist, Sergio Guzmán also traveled to this corner of the world to conduct a Smart Assessor’s Training and to attend the 16th Annual Microfinance Centre Conference in Budva, Montenegro. Although the Campaign is based in Washington, D.C., Campaign staff thrive on opportunities to engage in client protection efforts beyond the office.
It’s a good thing that Sergio does not have a fear of heights. With the amount of time that Sergio spends in the air each month, he might as well be Superman. The Smart Assessor’s Training in Budva brought together a diverse group of financial services experts including donors, investors, consultants, and CEOs of microfinance institutions (MFIs), among others in the Eastern Europe/Central Asia region. Even with the ranging backgrounds of these participants, Sergio notes that the evident common denominators are the enthusiasm to incorporate the Client Protection Principles (CPPs) into their work and a keen desire to improve their commitment to those they serve.
It is very exciting for the Campaign to generate interest among such a wide range of actors at events like the training in Budva. The Smart Campaign’s growing involvement in activities among participants from different backgrounds reflects client protection’s increasing foothold. This layered interest and further desire to cement client protection into business practices is a promising achievement for the movement.
> Posted by Syed Mohsin Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer, Pakistan Microfinance Network
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. Accordingly, this blog series will spotlight financial inclusion efforts around the globe, share insights coming out of the creation of a roadmap to full financial inclusion, and highlight findings from research on the “invisible market.”
At the Pakistan Microfinance Network, we are always in search of more data on financial inclusion in Pakistan. So imagine my delight when I heard about the Country Profiles feature on the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Mapping the Invisible Market website that features data from the World Bank Global Findex among other sources. My exploration of the Pakistan country profile page gave me some new insights and raised a few questions for future research.
First, a very high proportion of the people who took loans (largely informal) in the past year in Pakistan took them to deal with health and emergencies. Seventeen percent of all adults in Pakistan borrowed in the past year for health and emergencies, while only about 10 percent of the people in other middle income economies did so, even though in Pakistan, people are less likely to take out loans overall.
Reasons for taking out a loan
This observation makes me wonder if there is a pent-up demand for insurance in Pakistan. For a country that has seen a number of major disasters in the last few years, no doubt there is a great need for insurance products in Pakistan to help prepare for emergencies.
When I looked further at who it was that was taking out these loans (again, both formal and informal) for health or emergencies, I noticed that they were disproportionately rural, or poor, or to have only completed primary school. These observations offer a picture of what vulnerability looks like in Pakistan, and where financial inclusion efforts might be targeted for maximum impact.
Looking specifically at formal financial services, I found that the percent of people who have an account at a formal financial institution in Pakistan is quite low—10 percent—compared to the rest of South Asia—33 percent. In both, the number one use of accounts is to receive wages. Unsurprisingly, in Pakistan, education and gender have a great impact on the use of accounts—25 percent of people whose education level is secondary school or higher have an account compared to only four percent of people who have just a primary school education. Seventeen percent of men have an account compared to three percent of women. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, Director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative, the Council on Foreign Relations
The following post was originally published on Democracy in Development, Coleman’s CFR blog.
Imagine life without a bank account. Completing a simple financial transaction can require traveling a distance, incurring expenses, and losing precious income. Savings are more difficult to track and certainly don’t earn interest. Theft or loss of the proverbial “cookie jar” is a constant worry. Indeed, studies show that informal savers lose as much as 25 percent of their hard-earned cash each year due to theft and loss. Yet for over 2.5 billion people globally, this inconvenient, inefficient, and expensive reality is the case.
There are many reasons to believe that the number of unbanked people will shrink significantly in years to come, with important positive implications for economic growth and poverty reduction. First, grassroots and country-level efforts, both nonprofit and for-profit, are already showing how “unbanked” doesn’t have to be the status quo—and these efforts are greatly facilitated by mobile phones. Kenya is well-known for the widespread use of its mobile money system M-Pesa, which allows people to pay for goods and services through cell phones instead of with cash. Started in 2007, M-Pesa has already been used by the vast majority of Kenya’s adults.
Second, major financial institutions are supporting efforts to give more of the world’s population access to bank accounts and standard financial tools. Last summer, I wrote about Visa’s purchase of the mobile payments system Fundamo and the collaboration between USAID and Citi to expand financial inclusion, a promising instance of big financial institutions bringing their resources to bear on closing the financial inclusion gap.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
In school, my in-class instruction was mostly lectures from teachers and reading out of text books. In fact, before beginning other types of learning activities, such as games or role-plays, my teachers would often feel the need for a prefacing remark like everyone learns differently, so today we’ll be trying something new. My teachers were right. Everyone has their own learning style, and if we want everyone to learn, we need to adhere to this. Financial capability is no different. It isn’t enough to give someone a pamphlet or a fact sheet if we want them to be equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary for making sound financial decisions and for appropriately using financial services.
To this end, the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) is catalyzing advancements in financial capability through its Financial Capability Innovation Fund. The fund, now in its second iteration, selects non-profit led financial capability projects targeting low-income and underserved clients through a request for proposals process, and backs their development and testing through financial and non-financial support. Eight winning projects were selected in April for this round of the fund, receiving a total of $2.5 million in support. Paired with quality financial products and services, the selected projects leverage the power of new technologies and social networks to impart tailored, timely, and actionable guidance. A brief description of each project, in the words of CFSI, follows. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Joanna Ledgerwood, Senior Advisor, Access to Finance, Aga Khan Foundation
The following post was originally published in the Guardian Development Professionals Network DAI Partner Zone.
The microfinance industry has come under withering attack in recent years, pilloried among other things for its high interest rates and its coverage, which is often estimated to reach less than 10 percent of the population. But practitioners, the media, and the public should understand that microfinance is a broad term for a highly differentiated financial sector that is not without its successes. Each type of provider — from banks to savings groups — plays a particular role in providing the continuum of services typically needed to promote “financial inclusion” in underserved areas.
My recently published book, The New Microfinance Handbook: A Financial Market System Perspective, addresses the need to broaden microfinance’s reach to meet the diverse financial service needs of clients. For financial inclusion to increase, each type of institution must be deployed in the contexts in which it works best. Together, funders and governments must take a holistic, context-driven approach to improving financial services in poor areas — referred to as the market systems approach. While the commercialization of microfinance has had its successes, we need to consider the entire system, especially community-based providers, if we are to reach the rural poor with appropriate financial services.
The Mountain Societies Development Support Programme (MSDSP), an NGO set up and supported by the Aga Khan Foundation in Tajikistan, is a good example of a market systems approach where a variety of financial initiatives work collaboratively. Launched as a relief and humanitarian initiative, MSDSP transitioned to become a development organization, promoting good governance and local economic development. Recognizing that the legacy of distrust in the formal financial sector has been particularly damaging to people living in mountainous areas — already subject to isolation, marginalization, and deep poverty — MSDSP aims to address the lack of accessible financial services.
In the remote rural areas where MSDSP works, community-based savings groups (CBSGs) are at the heart of a successful effort to bring financial services to the poor, supported by a broad spectrum of financial and social institutions. Based on tested models in Africa and South Asia, CBSGs are simple savings and borrowing associations. Under the direction of elected leaders, groups of 15 to 25 members gather biweekly to manage their financial activities. After two months of training followed by approximately seven months of close supervision, CBSGs continue to operate, without external support, for many years. Members access loans and pay interest of about three percent per month, and all interest received contributes to increasing the loan fund which is periodically, usually annually, distributed back to members. No external capital is required, making CBSGs transparent and profitable for the members.
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