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> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of Top Picks features posts highlighting trends in identification technology and mobile money, as well as a post on new mobile money research targeting user-centered services design.
Innovations in identification technology, namely biometric identification, are discussed in a new Center for Global Development Blog post. The author indicates that key identification areas worth following are remote authentication, the identification of children, standardization and interoperability, and privacy. The post is framed in the context of identification conferences and events, whose content reflects the diversity of identification technology applications, such as in financial services.
There were 219 mobile money services across 84 countries at the end of 2013, with the number of active accounts growing from 37 million in June 2012 to 60 million in June 2013. Those are a few of the main findings from GSMA’s new MMU State of the Industry Report on Mobile Financial Services for the Unbanked. A new MMU Blog post highlights the report and its key insights. Expanding on MMU State of the Industry reports of previous years, this year’s report covers the new areas of mobile insurance, mobile credit, and mobile savings services.
> Posted by Center Staff
Equity Bank, Kenya’s largest bank by customer base, has applied for a license to operate a mobile telco business, a move that strongly suggests intent to enter the mobile money space. If realized, the bank and its 8 million customers could significantly disrupt M-Pesa’s current domination of the country’s market and help drive competition and innovation.
Given the type of license being sought, Equity Bank would not build a new telecommunications network, but would instead partner with one of the country’s prominent telcos and deploy services using this partner’s infrastructure.
Safaricom’s M-Pesa currently has a commanding hold on mobile money in Kenya with 21 million subscribers, covering roughly 75 percent of the country’s adult population. If Equity Bank’s customers were to subscribe to the in-house mobile money service in question, it would be positioned as the second largest in the country.
We look forward to the decision on Equity’s license and the action to follow.
Image credit: GSMA
> Posted by Bob Bragar, Principal, Strategies for Impact Investors
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.
The following is the second of two posts in which Bob Bragar discusses some of the unique governance challenges faced by microfinance institutions, as explored through a governance workshop that Bob chaired at European Microfinance Week in November 2013. In this post, workshop panelists Matthias Adler, Principal Economist, KfW and N. Srinivasan, an independent director at Equitas Bank in India, discuss the importance of their positions for effective microfinance governance. To access the first post, click here.
Institutional microfinance investors have a special role to play in maintaining good governance in an MFI, and this can take unexpected turns.
Matthias Adler from KfW spoke about the special concerns that his institution has. KfW is a major German public sector investor that is required by law to have board representation in the institutions in which it invests. As a result, KfW has developed special practices to strengthen the quality of their widespread board participation.
In particular, KfW has developed rules to create strict “Chinese walls” (information barriers) between their board members and the investment staff at KfW. Why? Because they are very aware of the potential for conflicts of interests between a board member’s duty to look (only and foremost) after the interests of the MFI, and the interests of individual investors. They make sure that a KfW board member will not return to headquarters and report on an MFI board meeting to his colleagues. In KfW’s view, this practice increases transparency and reduces the potential for distrust on the part of the MFI’s management. Management may need to obtain guidance from its board without always speaking directly to the investors. And if management is less forthcoming, the board cannot do its job.
While this concern is not exclusive to MFI investors, in the small world of microfinance, with its limited number of players, the concerns are all the greater.
KfW, as a leading microfinance investor, also wants to ensure that boards of directors have all of the skills they need. So KfW helps boards with needed training.
In the final presentation, N. Srinivasan, an independent board member of Equitas Bank in India, spoke persuasively about the value of truly independent directors who balance the needs of all MFI stakeholders.
> Posted by Richard Leftley, Chief Executive Officer, MicroEnsure
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.”
Last year a statistic was released claiming that there are 6 billion phones in circulation around the world. It is clear that mobile-based delivery channels are perhaps one of the greatest opportunities in working to achieve human and market development goals, including financial inclusion.
Microinsurance is one of the great beneficiaries of mobile-based payments and service delivery innovations, as shown by the rapid growth of mobile microinsurance (MMI) products from an estimated 20 in 2006 to 84 in 2013. Today much of the growth in microinsurance is through partnerships with mobile network operators that are keen to increase sales and retain customers. But demand side obstacles persist and pose a significant challenge to growth and sustainability. Many products are available that are sound and beneficial, but clients are not picking them up. Why is that?
Over the past nine years we have provided microinsurance to millions of clients via a range of distribution channels including banks and microfinance institutions, SACCOs, cooperatives, and even churches. However, our real breakthrough came when we realized that no one wakes up wanting to buy insurance, but people do wake up worried about the risks they face. Through our work with mobile network operators, we have demonstrated that the mass market will radically change their consumer behavior in return for free insurance that addresses their risk.
Recently I stopped a man in the street and asked him if he wanted to buy life insurance. However hard I tried I could not make the sale, but when I asked him how much money he sent home to his mother every month, he became excited about a product that would keep providing that remittance to his mother if he had an accident and died.
Our ability to provide great microinsurance products is driven by our capacity to consider the needs and attitudes of our clients and then integrate these types of insights about choice and value into each product.
> Posted by Center Staff
It’s common knowledge in the United States that the student loan situation is bad and getting worse, but what are the actual statistics and how severe is this trend? Like other kinds of debt, student debt has innumerable implications for young borrowers, as well as for the country’s recovering economy.
A new report from the New America Foundation inspects undergraduate student loan debt data from the past ten years, compiling borrower rates and amounts, in aggregate and by institution and degree type. The report, The Student Debt Review, draws from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies, a national survey series of student financial aid. Here are some of the report’s main findings:
- More students are indebted. Across all institution and degree types, the percentage of graduates with debt increased from 54 percent in 2004 to 62 percent in 2012. In 2004 there were 1.6 million graduates with debt. By 2012 there were 2.4 million.
- They owe more. Total student loan debt increased by an average of $3,300 between 2008 and 2012 after a period of four years in which it changed only marginally (2004-2008).
- For-profit colleges are a sore spot. Student debt is increasing especially quickly for bachelor’s degree recipients at private for-profit colleges, who now graduate with an average debt of $40,000 and pay $153 more each month than those graduating with bachelor’s degrees at public colleges. A very high proportion of the bachelor’s degree graduates at private for-profit colleges have borrowed (87 percent), compared to public colleges (64 percent).
> Posted by Bob Bragar, Principal, Strategies for Impact Investors
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.
The following is the first of two posts in which Bob Bragar discusses some of the unique governance challenges faced by microfinance institutions. The posts examine governance through the guidance of three experienced board members. This post shares the experience of Tamar Lebanidze as Constanta Foundation, an NGO she founded, underwent the change to become Constanta Bank, a regulated bank. To access the second post, click here.
“I don’t see why we have to reinvent the wheel. Good governance practices for microfinance institutions are just the same as for any other business. Why should we spend so much time talking about ‘MFI governance’ when there is so much information already available about good governance?”
This question was raised during a recent meeting of the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Governance Working Group, of which I am a member. The question really surprised me. I had always assumed that governance for microfinance institutions was special. It is not exactly the same as good governance practices in other businesses because microfinance is not the same as other businesses. Even so, it’s a good question. It got me thinking.
Of course, many good governance practices are the same from sector to sector. Running an enterprise well involves challenges that are not specific to the product or service the enterprise produces. Any institution can suffer if the board functions badly, risks are not managed, or management lacks transparency. And there is a lot of good work that is already out there on the role of key stakeholders to maintain good governance in financial services and other industries.
So why do we bother to re-think these issues for microfinance? Because microfinance is a more complex business than most. Going beyond just earning profits, the double or triple bottom line that we ask MFIs to achieve makes success, and therefore governance, very complex. Moreover, microfinance’s particular history of migration from NGOs to semi-regulated financial institutions to formal banks adds challenges to achieving good governance. The stew thickens when we bring multicultural perspectives to MFI boards through the presence of international investors from various countries.
> Posted by David Porteous, Managing Director, Bankable Frontier Associates
In Beth Rhyne’s recent blog post (“Base-of-the-Pyramid Savings Among Accion Partners: Some News Is Bad and Some News Is Good”), she argues for the need to stratify deposits by size to understand what is happening inside a bank’s portfolio of depositors. We agree. We have just completed the four year GAFIS project, sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Associates and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Through GAFIS, we worked with five large commercial banks around the world (shown in the map below) to promote the development of appropriate savings products directed at low income people.
These five banks, which typically rank as largest or second largest retail banks in their domestic markets, collectively report 77 million customers. They too suffer from high rates of dormancy, ranging from 20 to 90 percent in different account categories. Yet they were willing to embark on a peer journey of learning and support to seek to overcome the channel and product issues which had limited the success of their savings products. And they were willing at the end to disclose in the public report, available here, some indications of the underlying stratification of their deposit. The chart below, extracted from the GAFIS report, compared median with average balances in the account categories which GAFIS supported, underlining the message in Beth Rhyne’s blog about the need to stratify savings. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Philip M. Brown and Deborah Drake, Citi Microfinance and 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.
What will this year’s Microfinance Banana Skins Survey top message be? We are eagerly awaiting the responses to the recently launched 2014 Microfinance Banana Skins Survey from practitioners, investors, regulators, and other industry stakeholders around the world. These responses will provide insights into the greatest perceived risks facing the sector over the next few years and reveal the risks to be avoided on the path ahead.
The titles of the past four Microfinance Banana Skins surveys paint the picture of continuous sector evolution since the first publication in 2008. If previous titles are any indication, the new headline will set the tone and raise a debate around key risk issues.
Entitled “Risk in a Booming Industry“, the 2008 report highlighted concerns of microfinance institutions about “how to scale” in a healthy way. With changed economic realities, the external environment became the area of focus with “Confronting Crisis and Change” in 2009, and “Losing Its Fairy Dust” in 2011. The most recent survey in 2012, “Staying Relevant,” highlighted the changed setting for microfinance brought on by new entrants and new technologies. The titles and changing risk rankings reflect the increasing integration of microfinance into the broader financial ecosystem, and the challenges that microfinance clients and service providers encounter as the sector evolves.
> Posted by Center Staff
PCMA CEO Abeer Odeh and PMA Governor Jihad Al Wazir
Last week Palestinian government officials announced plans to create a national financial inclusion strategy, an initiative that would put it on a short list of two countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that have nationwide, government-led inclusion plans (Morocco being the other).
The Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) and the Palestine Capital Markets Authority (PCMA), the country’s central bank and a national regulating body will co-lead the project along with support from the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and other public and private groups.
The policies and guidelines of the strategy will aim to facilitate greater access, improve awareness and financial education, and reinforce client protection. An area inviting particular attention is access to credit, which is low for both individuals and SMSEs. The strategy will build on inclusion principles endorsed by the G20, World Bank, AFI, and the OECD Principles on National Strategy for Financial Education.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
In South Africa, where fewer than 20 percent of people have medical insurance, the alternative product of hospital cash plans (HCPs) is becoming increasingly popular, but it remains to be seen where within the country’s shifting healthcare landscape HCPs will settle, and what HCP products will look like as they mature. There are currently 2.4 million people covered by HCPs in South Africa and this number is growing by 50,000 each month.
As their name might suggest, hospital cash plans don’t offer comprehensive healthcare, but instead offer cash payouts at the time of hospitalization. Payouts depend on the premiums customers pay, which means that not all medical treatment can be fully covered. However, with HCPs rising popularity and the poor state of South Africa’s health system (the country was ranked 175 out of 191 in a WHO assessment of country-level health system performance), this product area deserves thorough attention, and a few recent reports from Finmark Trust offer just that.
But first, a few basics on HCPs. Premiums paid for HCPs are determined by the individual’s age and desired level of coverage. Their cash payout at the time of hospitalization is determined by the level of coverage and the number of days spent in the hospital. In some cases the type of medical treatment received affects payout, too. Though as payout is most often determined just by days in the hospital, not the cost of care, insurers typically don’t monitor how the financial support is spent. This allows policyholders to use the money for other expenses that come up during illnesses, like getting to hospital, and to substitute for income lost due to missed work. HCPs are aimed mainly at users of public health services. Only the wealthiest 20 percent of South Africans use private services, and they are more likely to be the users of traditional medical insurance. There are currently between 30 and 40 insurers offering HCPs and about 100 offering traditional healthcare.
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