You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2014.
> Posted by Joshua Goldstein, Principal Director for Economic Citizenship & Disability Inclusion, CFI
I spent the first two hours of the conference in a speed dating exercise called First Connections, where delegates had five minutes to give each other their elevator pitches before moving chairs to meet the next delegate. I recognize that common perceptions of this sort of activity perceive it as always awkward and often a waste of time. In this case, however, my speed dating was at the annual Skoll World Forum, and its value was indicative of the diverse connections needed to solve the complex challenges of my work on disability inclusion, and of those attending the Forum.
The Skoll World Forum, held in Oxford, England, brings together social entrepreneurs, as well as funders, politicians, media, and others who, in Founder Jeff Skoll’s words, are committed to “solving the world’s most pressing problems.” I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the 11th annual Forum, based on my contribution to a global civil rights struggle to end discrimination against persons with disabilities. My scope of work within this ambitious movement has been developing a set of tools and trainings with my colleagues at the Center for Financial Inclusion to make microfinance institutions and other financial service providers disability inclusive. Along with facilitating the industry’s integration of these tools and trainings, we’re working with in-country stakeholders to develop disability inclusion plans in Ecuador, India, Paraguay, and elsewhere. But achieving disability inclusion in financial services requires more than financial services providers. It also requires the involvement of technology providers, telcos, government officials, educators, community groups, and other actors.
Over 1,000 people from 60 countries gathered to share their ideas and innovations at Skoll. The hope of event organizers is that such a high-level convening of disparate leaders will produce new collaborations and lead to new innovations. And when I say disparate, I mean disparate. I crossed paths with Eli Williamson, Co-Founder of Leave No Veteran Behind, an organization providing educational and employment assistance to veterans facing hardship, as well as Chris Underhill, MBE, Founder of the global mental health organization Basic Needs, and Mabel van Oranje, Chair of Girls Not Brides, which combats child marriage.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
Financial capability is cornerstone to financial inclusion. After all, without the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to make good financial decisions, the utility of accessible financial services is greatly compromised. However, financial capability levels need addressing, even in countries that have relatively high services penetration such as the United States. Thankfully, the urgency is increasingly recognized, for example, through efforts such as Financial Literacy Month in the U.S. About a decade ago, April was designated as a month to call attention to financial literacy, and in 2012 the shift was made to include attitude and behavior change: President Obama proclaimed Financial Capability Month. To celebrate, here’s a rundown of where the United States stands with financial capability, and a few public and private efforts aimed at improving this financial inclusion area.
According to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, about 40 percent of American adults report keeping close track of their spending and about 35 percent have a budget. In terms of effective money management, consumer debt in the U.S. totals more than $2 trillion. In perhaps the most alarming statistic of all, half of Americans indicate that they have less in savings than they would need to live for one month in an emergency and a quarter have less than they need for two weeks. Roughly 65 percent of American adults have not ordered a copy of their credit report in the past year and about 30 percent don’t know their credit score. When asked to grade their level of financial proficiency, 40 percent of Americans give themselves either a C, D, or F.
But Americans do recognize the importance of financial capability. Eighty percent of adults indicate that they would benefit from advice and answers from professionals on basic finance questions. Many would like to speak with financial education service providers, such as credit counselors, followed by banks, and then financial planners.
> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of top picks features posts that spotlight green loans reducing energy poverty, savings and loans to improve the vulnerability of microbusinesses, and factors driving uptake of mobile insurance services.
In celebration of Earth Day, the Kiva Blog took the opportunity to share their work on green loans. These loans to individuals and small business owners help with the high upfront costs of clean energy technology. Globally, 1.3 billion people live in energy poverty – without access to modern energy services. Green loans support healthy and environmentally friendly energy switches, like from kerosene to solar lighting. Kerosene lighting produces black carbon or soot which is harmful to breath and also a greenhouse gas. Kiva has facilitated the funding of 39,000 green loans.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
The 450 million smallholder farmers around the world, who comprise the majority of those living in absolute poverty, have an enormous unmet financing need. Such financing requirements include small loans for inputs like seeds and fertilizer. A few weeks ago, seven leading social lenders, who collectively disbursed $360 million in 2013 toward agriculture financing, joined forces to spur sustainable growth and instill responsible practices in this vital lending area: they formed the Council on Smallholder Agricultural Finance.
Launched at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, the Council is made up of Alterfin, Oikocredit, Rabobank’s Rabo Rural Fund, responsAbility Investments AG, Root Capital, the Shared Interest Society, and Triodos Investment Management. The Council will meet regularly, share experiences and insights, and develop best practices and industry standards across three areas: market growth; responsible lending principles; social and environmental impact.
The Council particularly targets loans to “missing middle” agricultural businesses in low- and middle-income countries. The “missing middle” refers to businesses that require financing in the $25,000 to $2 million range, which are amounts often deemed too large for microfinance and too low for commercial banks. These businesses include producer organizations, companies that source from smallholder farmers, and companies that provide productive assets to smallholder farmers, often on credit. These companies can serve hundreds to thousands of farmers, offering an array of services including market access support, training, financial services, and accessible assets. Though millions of smallholder farmers are connected to these missing middle businesses, the vast majority are not.
> Posted by Danielle Piskadlo, Manager, Investing in Inclusive Finance, 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.
You may have noticed an uptick in headlines over the past few months announcing the selling of microfinance equity shares. Here are a few examples: Accion sells 15 percent stake in Paraguay’s El Comercio to Incofin’s Rural Impulse Fund; Grupo ACP sells its 60.68 percent stake in Peru’s MiBanco to Edyficar; Triodos sells stake in Cambodia’s ACLEDA Bank to ORIX Corporation.
Expect to see more such headlines, as the number of exits from microfinance equity investments is anticipated to accelerate in the next couple of years as a result of a combination of different factors:
- Equity funds are maturing. Many funds were created around the same time and while some have no official time horizon, even patient capital reaches a point when it is time to consider moving on.
- Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are also maturing. Thanks to the patient capital and expertise of many initial microfinance investors, some MFIs are now so large and sophisticated that they need new investors with deeper pockets and different expertise to further their growth and development.
- Social investors are moving into new frontiers. Some social investors are reevaluating where their equity funding and participation can have the biggest impact, for example by moving into more rural or poorer countries. In a number of countries, regulatory environments are becoming friendlier to foreign microfinance investors now that they have a more proven track record.
Given that many social investors are seeking to pass the baton, what does it mean to exit an investment responsibly?
The freshly released paper, The Art of the Responsible Exit in Microfinance Equity Sales, dissects exactly this question. The paper, a joint effort of the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion (CFI) and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), shares the thoughts and experiences of 50 investors and industry stakeholders on the topic of exiting an investment in a “responsible” manner.
What did we uncover?
> Posted by Karen Firestone, President and CEO, Aureus Asset Management
The following post was originally published on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network.
Financial services firms want to reach more women; so I conclude from data presented by Pamela Grossman of Getty Images at SXSW this year. According to data collected by Getty, financial firms are buying 20 percent more stock photos of women today than they were five years ago. At the same time, the share of men shown in their advertising has declined.
Of course, we live in a wildly diverse world; we want to be inclusive and broad-minded ourselves; and we therefore want our providers of financial advice, energy, and technology to reflect those values. We prefer Morgan Stanley or Citigroup to be talking to all of us, showing us that they have transcended their traditional, mostly white and male clientele. According to Chris Edwards, former Group Creative Director for Arnold Worldwide, we also want visual evidence that the professionals at these firms are as diverse as the clientele they seek. Advertising images reinforce and extend these efforts.
Financial institutions portray women today as competent and self-confident, and often feature attractive, middle-aged advisers talking to couples in which the woman is similarly well dressed and clearly attentive. According to Dr. Emma Firestone, who has studied the audience perception and response to images and words in media and entertainment, from a cognitive perspective, “It makes sense for advertisers to present women as strong, well-educated consumers. This is appealing to women who see an attractive self-image reflected back at them, and to men, who are flattered by the idea that smart, self-possessed, and financially secure women are their own life partners.” Men are much more likely today, than decades ago, to be comfortable with and appreciate their spouses as full partners in their own financial decision-making – at the same time, imagery of supportive female financial advisers plays into comforting stereotypes of the woman-as-helpmeet, perhaps humanizing an industry consumers view as confusing or even threatening.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
As you’re here on the CFI Blog, you’re likely familiar with microfinance. But was this the case back when you were in school? It’s April, which means we’re amidst the Month of Microfinance (MoMF), a student-led movement spotlighting microfinance and bridging the gap between students and the sector. This year’s MoMF spans activities engaging students, MFIs, and key industry players, including Kiva, the SEEP Network, and Truelift, supporting access to quality financial services for all and engaging the next generation of microfinance professionals.
Microfinance is increasingly taught in schools, but not everyone has access to a course. The Month of Microfinance offers students a platform to learn about the industry and in turn easily spread the word through their networks. For students looking to organize activities on campus, the MoMF team provides the resources to screen a movie, set-up informative displays, organize fundraisers, and spearhead guest speaker events. A number of MoMF contests conducive to online media conversation are underway. Kiva U, Citi Microfinance, and AboutMicrofinance are hosting a student video competition and an essay competition prompting participants to explore the topics of poverty alleviation, profit management, technology innovation, and gender equality.
> Posted by V. McIntyre, Freelance Writer for the Harvard Kennedy School
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.”
Enthusiasm for mobile money among the financial inclusion community is generally high, but like with most topics, when you pierce beyond the surface-level praises, the tone of the conversation becomes more mixed. As Harvard Business School professor Shawn Cole stated on day three of the HKS Executive Education course Rethinking Financial Inclusion, “Mobile money has been next year’s big thing for the last ten years.”
Comments on disappointing levels of mobile money services uptake are common, and are often paired with another dominant piece in the mobile money narrative: M-Pesa’s runaway success in Kenya. Since its introduction in 2007, M-Pesa has been taken up by 70 percent of the country’s population. And as the professors pointed out, of those who used M-Pesa in the last 12 months, 43 percent did not have formal bank accounts. This statistic exhibits how mobile money provides financial services to many who might not otherwise have them. The statistic also alludes to the question of whether the service is a good on-ramp to more financial services. Questions about on-ramps and services uptake are essential to the mobile money and financial inclusion conversations at the heart of discussions throughout the weeklong HKS program. Balancing such questions were conversations that illustrated clear, and perhaps surprising, benefits of mobile money.
Jenny Aker, a professor at Tufts University, cited a study that took place during a drought in Niger which showed that distributing government aid via mobile money versus cash not only cut costs, it increased diet diversity. In this case, when women received their government benefits through their phones, they had greater control over the use of the money, and this affected household decision-making. The study also demonstrated that with mobile money the distribution and receiving of funds was cheaper for government and the recipients.
In addition, mobile money helps users weather economic shocks. Tavneet Suri, MIT professor and scientific director of J-PAL Africa, presented the results of a study of several thousand Kenyans she conducted with William Jack of Georgetown University. It showed that M-Pesa users are better able to share risk through an increase in remittances received and a higher diversity of senders. A shock that reduces consumption of a non-user by 21 percent reduces consumption by M-Pesa users by only 11 percent. Mobile money dramatically increases the size and breadth of the user’s safety net: Suri estimates the insurance value of M-Pesa at around 3-4 percent of the user’s income.
The huge potential for digital finance to reach the last mile of the financially excluded
> Posted by Peer Stein, Director, IFC Access to Finance Advisory
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 week’s seminar on digital finance at the 2014 World Bank Group / IMF Spring Meetings convened innovators, private sector leaders, and government representatives to discuss the potential innovative business models and new technologies have in reaching and empowering the financially excluded poor and small businesses faster and with greater scale, while contributing significantly to the World Bank Group goal of universal access to finance by year 2020. The session highlighted the diversity of business models that use technology to reach the excluded market segment, showcased by innovators from bKash in Bangladesh, Airtel Money-Africa, and Berlin-based Mobisol operating in rural East Africa.
I’d like to share three key points that emerged from the forum.
First, multi-stakeholder collaboration is a must.
None of the featured innovators is a traditional bank or financial institution but each one realizes the importance of partnering with banks and other players in this dynamic space. For example, bKash was born from a fusion of BRAC Bank and Money in Motion, and continues to operate as a subsidiary of BRAC Bank, holding 80 percent of the mobile money market in Bangladesh. With such an adoption success within two and a half years, recording 90,000 digital money agents and 11.6 million registered users, in the words of Kamal Quadir, CEO, “bKash is now a Bengali verb [synonymous with ‘to send money’].” Chidi Okpala, Director of Airtel Money-Africa, a mobile money service with an active base of 5 million customers, reinforced that one of the factors of success in this diverse market is the need to position your mobile money service for stakeholder collaboration rather than competition. The real competitor is cash. Walt Macnee, president of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, emphasized the company’s connecting and collaborative role focused on ensuring interoperable platforms among a diversity of players.
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