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> Posted by Alyssa Passarelli, Communications and Operations Assistant, the Smart Campaign
The launch of Client Protection Certification in January 2013 is a significant milestone for the Smart Campaign and for the financial inclusion community. As an initiative that is the first of its kind, it shifts awareness of client protection in microfinance to an industry standard. The Smart Campaign and the licensed certifiers have been working diligently to get the word out about certification to help build engagement and a market for this important program.
A frequent request from participants in the certification webinar series was to clarify the difference between a Smart Assessment and a Client Protection Certification mission. While they differ in purpose, the important message is how they work hand-in-hand. Both assessments and certification are based on the 30 adequate standards of care rooted in the Smart Campaign’s seven Client Protection Principles (CPPs).
- An assessment is a report for management. It used the standards as reference to give an in-depth-”diagnostic,” with a grade of the MFI’s practices. The Smart Campaign recommends Smart Assessments as an excellent way for an MFI to prepare itself for certification.
- Certification is aimed at the stakeholders of an institution. It applies the standards as a firm benchmark for achievement that merits certification. With certification, a financial institution can tell clients, investors, and regulators that it takes adequate care to ensure that its clients are protected.
A Smart Assessment typically lasts four to five days and is conducted by two trained assessors who examine an MFI’s policies and procedures, as well as interview staff and clients. After the assessment field-visit, the MFI receives a lengthy and detailed confidential report that presents the assessors’ comments on each indicator, grading, and supporting evidence. As such, a Smart Assessment is a very useful opportunity for an MFI to see which areas of operations are in adherence with the standards and which need improvement. The cost of an assessment will vary depending on the MFI and the partner with which it collaborates. To date, the Smart Campaign has conducted over 75 assessments across the globe. Most of the organizations that are now Client Protection Certified first underwent an assessment to make sure they were prepared for the certification mission. You can learn more about Smart Assessments from Sergio Guzmán, Lead Specialist for the Smart Campaign.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
Remember when you were young, and a sandbox presented an opportunity to build your own castle? The GPFI (the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion) Basic Set of Financial Inclusion Indicators and its accompanying website is kind of like that—it offers a space in which users can customize and test their own definitions of financial inclusion through an interactive platform, building off of a set of key “ingredients” in the data world.
We’ve talked before about the GPFI’s “Basic Set,” but we wanted to be sure to highlight it again, given the attention that it has received over the past few weeks alongside its official release on April 21 at the 2013 World Bank Spring Meetings.
In offering this service, the GPFI addresses one of the biggest challenges in financial inclusion: measurement. We all seem to have a general definition of financial inclusion, but when it comes to operationalizing this definition, things get complicated. Should the use of financial services be an individual or a household measure? How can we parse out (and should we parse out) financial tools used for businesses from tools used for personal things? Are surveys run by international organizations the best source of data or are numbers reported by central banks more reliable? The Basic Set remains fairly agnostic on these questions, instead giving highlights from all of the data—SME, personal, supply-side, demand-side, international organization-led, and government-reported.
See, for example, the diversity of indicators in the GPFI Basic Set as applied to sub-Saharan Africa. “Accounts” includes a demand-side (individual) measure of accounts, SME accounts, and both measures for women in particular. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
When you receive a paycheck, what are your next steps? Do you have set amounts that you allocate to certain bank accounts? Do you specify how much you’ll be allowed to spend across a set of expense categories? Maybe you even have analysis programs that help you track your recent financial activity and their relation to your goals? Since you’re reading a financial inclusion blog, I’m guessing you fit into one if not all three of these money management groupings. But of course this isn’t the case for everyone.
For many, receiving a paycheck isn’t followed by examining a financial analysis program’s dashboard, making adjustments to a financial plan for moving forward, and carefully dispensing funds. It’s followed by the elation that comes from knowing that you’ll be able to pay your rent this month. By the relief that you’ll be able to pay back the family and friends who lent you money. Maybe even by a slightly frivolous purchase to help wash away the sting of financial stress. Money management in one of its many forms likely comes, but it’s often that it comes much after the paycheck. And it’s reasonable to assume that this separation gets in the way of more holistic money management.
With the help of a $350,000 grant from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), the Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners will soon launch PayGoal, an employee payment program that’s coupled with an array of financial services. The program provides on-site, individual financial counseling to companies’ employees, facilitates their participation in formal financial services, offers them financial capability tools, and assists in their establishing financial plans and goals – all while integrating the companies’ payment system. Workers will predetermine how much of their wages will be allocated across spending and savings buckets, and instead of a traditional paystub, employees receive their pay with a report on their financial progress over the pay period (money saved, debt reduced, financial milestones reached, etc.) as well as educational messaging, such as the difference between gross and net pay.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
Accessible savings services make countries more resilient during times of financial crisis, a new report from Rui Han and Martin Melecky of the World Bank finds. It’s been established that access to savings leads to increased financial stability at the individual and household level, but this report is the first empirical evidence of this relationship at the financial systems scale.
As the current banking crisis in Cyprus reminds us, during times of financial uncertainty and crisis, the potent threat of widespread bank withdrawals (bank runs) emerges. In 2009, the volume of global deposits shrank by about 12 percent in a ratio compared to GDP.
The report investigated the effect of bank deposit service accessibility on the stability of bank funds in 113 countries during the 2008 global financial crisis. It found that a 10 percent increase in savings service accessibility mitigates a country’s deposit withdrawal rates by about 4 percent, with this link spanning nations of all income levels and strongest in middle income countries. One reason for this increased readiness of clients in middle income countries to withdraw funds is low familiarity and trust of banks.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
There’s a lot of data out there. And some of us are brave enough to use it (including you, my friend).
Recently we released an interactive Data Explorer tool and individual Country Profiles, allowing users to visually explore financial inclusion data in comparison with other development indicators in one central location. You can see our analysis of some of the data, but more importantly, we would like to invite you to explore the data for yourself.
For those interested in financial inclusion figures in specific countries, regions, or income groups of interest, visit Country Profiles. There we display data from the Global Findex along with demographic data relevant to understanding financial inclusion across the lifecycle. As we continue our own analysis of global trends, we will add figures on income, urbanization, technology, and more for each country.
Click on the financial inclusion bars to see a breakdown of the data by client segment, and use the tool to understand why or how people use financial services in particular countries. At the bottom of the page, you can interact with the demographic data by scrolling through the years to see past and projected population trends from 1950 to 2100. (This is very cool.)
> Posted by Adriana Magdas, Senior Associate, CFI
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. This blog series spotlights financial inclusion efforts around the globe, shares insights from the FI2020 consultative process and highlights findings from “Mapping the Invisible Market.”
A sneak-peek version of the early findings from the Roadmap to Financial Inclusion is now available on our website. Developed through a consultative process of more than 40 experts spanning the public and private sectors, these key messages suggest what stakeholders across industries and regions should do to take action and advance financial inclusion considerably in the next decade.
They answer questions such as: what role can technology providers play in increasing the financial capability of clients in the regions where they operate? How can providers and consumer groups develop means for clients to raise their own voices?
The focus areas of these early findings are based on the seven-point priority action agenda identified by the CFI in 2011 through the Opportunities and Obstacles to Financial Inclusion survey of industry practitioners, donors, and investors. They are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
With so much activity in the financial inclusion sphere these days, Top Picks had plenty of great blogs to consider sharing this week. Three posts stood out to us though, covering the areas of adolescent empowerment, new biometric identification technology research, and electronic government-to-person (G2P) payments.
- Adolescent women in Uganda are improving their economic situation and are living healthier lives, thanks to BRAC Uganda’s Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents ELA Program. A new post on the Kiva blog shares the results from an independent impact study revealing that the ELA program is attaining significant success. The program results in a 35 percent increase in likelihood that an adolescent girl would be engaged in an income-generating activity, a 13 percent increase in condom use among sexually active participants, and an 83 percent decrease in participants’ reports of having sex unwillingly. Over 40,000 women have been reached by the program. Kiva offers loans to program participants. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Paul Breloff, Managing Director, Accion Venture Lab
The following post was originally published on the CGAP Blog.
In my last post, we talked about the potential for start-ups to shake things up in the financial inclusion space. But where’s the real opportunity today? At Venture Lab, we’ve got our eye on a number of trends for 2013.
First, mobile. There’s no denying the increasing ubiquity of mobile phones – over 4 billion in the developing world and counting – and we’re excited to explore the ways that mobile phones provide a channel to reach people with financial services. Our financial inclusion community has long focused on the growth of Kenya’s M-PESA, and no doubt, with over 16 million customers and 80 percent of the nation’s population having used it last year, it’s an iconic story in a sector thirsty for scaled success stories. Hopefully, markets like Pakistan, Tanzania, and Mexico won’t be far behind.
But there are other ways mobile can enable more widespread access to financial services. Take Coda Payments, for example, one of our first investments working in Southeast Asia. Coda operates a payments processing platform that connects with mobile network operators’ (MNO) billing systems and enables customers to purchase digital goods with a straightforward deduction against prepaid airtime. Think apps, e-content, information services, insurance premiums, and more.
> Posted by Center Staff
Top Picks is back from a long hiatus with posts on incorporating behavioral economics into financial service design, the potential for academic research in financial inclusion efforts, and the importance of quality data.
- A new post on Next Billion from Jake Kendall of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offers insight into how behavioral economics can be used to improve money management. The post shares work from Ignacio Mas and Colin Meyer on building optimum mobile user-interfaces, includes a study on the effectiveness of basic finance heuristics over formal accounting training, and explores the potential of algorithms that interpret clients’ unique behaviors to better guide them towards financial goals. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
Andre Rison is one of the athletes that speaks about money management in ESPN’s “Broke.”
We talk a lot on this blog about financial inclusion as it relates to specific population segments. But one group we never expected to cover is professional athletes. That is, until now…
ESPN recently aired a documentary aptly titled Broke. The film investigates why professional athletes in the United States – namely football and basketball players – have such a hard time managing their money. “By the time they have been retired for two years, 78 percent of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress; within five years of retirement, an estimated 60 percent of former NBA players are broke,” the film begins.
Now, if you’ve been exposed to professional sports in the United States, you’ve probably noticed that the celebrity culture surrounding top athletes includes extreme purchasing. Lots of clothes, jewelry, cars, houses. But there’s more to athletes’ financial mismanagement than big buying.
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