> Posted by Center Staff
What are the most important questions that need to be researched in the financial inclusion arena?
The Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion will soon launch a fellows program to support research and thought leadership in financial inclusion – and we are calling on you to help! The purpose of this program will be to encourage independent researchers and analysts to examine some of the most important challenges in the financial inclusion arena. We plan to select a few priority research topics for fellows to examine.
Here’s where you come in. Below is a list of research topics that members of our Financial Inclusion 2020 team believe need answering. We’re checking in with you – our blog audience – to find out which topics you think are the most important to investigate. Please consider this list a starting point. Give us thumbs up or down on the topics listed, and propose topics of your own. Once we select the top priority questions, we will issue a call for proposals. Meanwhile, we offer this list to provoke a broader conversation about research needed in the financial inclusion field.
You can respond either in the comment block below, or by email to .
Technology-related topics
- Impact of ubiquitous internet access on the business models for financial inclusion. By 2020, the vast majority of the world’s people will have access to internet through smart phones and tablets. Internet access could transform the way financial service providers and customers interact and facilitate a richer interface with customers. What scenarios are possible and are providers ready to respond?
- Under what conditions do “on-ramps” lead to deeper inclusion? With the World Bank’s commitment to Universal Financial Access focused on connecting people to transaction accounts, the next question is how (and whether) such connections lead to active account usage or access to additional products. What are the cases of successful access expansion that have led to deeper inclusion and why did they succeed?
- Role of fintech start-ups in provoking industry-wide change. Are fintech start-ups cool but not especially relevant, or are they creating the future? It’s clear that they only matter if they generate large impact. Some start-ups scale directly; others are acquired by large companies; still others provoke competitors. Picking one or more types of fintech, how are start-ups changing the mainstream?
- Empowering the front line through technology. Much attention has been paid to use of technology (tablets, cell phones, POS devices) to increase the productivity of front line staff. But how can these devices also help as training and human resource management tools or as means to provide information that adds value to the client experience?
- Cost savings from technology in financial service delivery. Financial institutions are incorporating technology into their operations, trying to reducing costs. They use data analytics to streamline credit underwriting, digital field applications to boost productivity, and mobile payments to reduce the cost of handling transactions. Has such automation actually led to lower costs (or other benefits)?
- BOP businesses and digital payment acceptance. Building a cash-lite ecosystem depends on creating an acceptance environment (P2B) where the merchants that BOP customers buy from and sell to can process electronic payments. What is the experience to date in enrolling BOP merchants in digital payment acceptance, and what factors promote or prohibit this transformation?
Customers and products
- Meeting big life needs. Households need financial services to help them manage milestones like education, marriage, shelter, and older age. Research could select one or more life milestones and examine the prospects for significant innovation in a financial service to support it.
- Clients that grow from microenterprise to small business. An increasing number of veteran clients of microfinance institutions (MFIs) began borrowing as microenterprises and are now small businesses with higher turnover and more employees. What factors supported such growth? How do the financial service needs of these enterprises change at larger scale?
- MFI experience with SME portfolios. A number of MFIs now offer services to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Performance of SME portfolios has been varied, as have the approaches used in serving these clients. What has the experience been and what underwriting and risk management tools have been successful?
- Learning from informal financial services. Many people continue to use informal financial services even as they increase use of formal services. What lessons do robust forms of informal services have for formal service providers?
Policy and regulation
- How is the doctrine of “proportionality” working for the BOP? The standard setting bodies for the global financial sector call for a proportionate approach to regulation, recognizing that complicated verifications make small accounts and transactions unprofitable. Where are tiered KYC and other proportional approaches being used, and are they succeeding?
- Alternative data from a consumer perspective. Poor people’s increasing use of technology yields data that has value—but how can they participate in the value of the information they create? And avoid its misuse? What are the risks and benefits to clients from use of alternative data and what policies and conditions minimize risk and support benefits?
- Your topic here…
Image credit: Accion
Have you read?
New Research Highlights Increasing Use of Alternative Data in Credit Reporting
Individually Tailored Financial Education: What the Research Tells Us Is Possible
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6 comments
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May 12, 2015 at 11:40 am
Leslie Puth
Here are two:
Customers and Products:
How to narrow the gender gap of account holders?
There is a persistent 9% gap favoring male over female account holders in developing countries, unchanged since 2011. Researchers could consider how financial products and their delivery could be designed in ways to encourage more women to become account holders.
The role of microinsurance and its adoption among microentrepreneurs and farmers.
Microinsurance can help mitigate repayment risk on a loan as well as real property losses, but it is difficult to convince people with little spare income to pay for a potential benefit. Researchers could investigate the efficacy of a demonstration effect as well as various pricing models, incentives and public-private partnerships.
May 12, 2015 at 11:48 am
Patrick Mfossa
I have gone through the 12 unanswered questions of this post and question number 10 has retained my attention. The financial landscape of the large majority of developing countries is made a continuum of financial intermediates (formal, semi-formal, informal) reflecting the socio-economic profiles of people living in those countries.
For example, most of us in SSA are very familiar with ASCAs and ROSCAs. In my native village ( West Cameroon) these types of Associations are a second nature. An increasing number of research reveals that more than 50 % of the overall savings in Cameroon is being captured by ROSCA ( Tontine). Even young secondary schools students are engaged in such associations. I remember we had one in our Classroom. This did not only enables us become closer, but also to build a kind of financial assets that later on ( during Holly days) were used to finance our personal small holly days businesses or for consumption purposes. Today we are no longer at the secondary school, we are even no more in the same town, some of us are abroad for studies. But the social capital created at that time has grown and resisted to ultra mobility across time. It has even give birth to an authentic OSCA ( Online Savings and Credit Association). This self – sustaining online association has been functioning since November 2014. It uses a very simple and formal approach that can be used to spread financial inclusion among those young in Africa who are now familiar with Smart Phones. ROSCA and ASCA are said to be informal, well our OSCA is more likely to be formal since all the transactions it generates do transit within the formal sector. We have many to learn from old age informal mechanisms. It is up to us to take a careful look at them.
May 13, 2015 at 9:19 am
Daniel Rozas
What metrics can better capture financial inclusion?
Really, more metrics? Well, yes. The metrics we have were developed during a time when credit was the primary objective. Now we have savings, insurance, payments. Findex is a good demand-side dataset, but doesn’t help at the institutional level — how does an MFI know how well it’s meeting financial inclusion targets? No good metrics to track these…
I elaborate more on this here: http://www.e-mfp.eu/blog/biggest-gap-financial-inclusion-metrics
May 13, 2015 at 9:42 am
erhyne
Thanks Leslie, Patrick and Daniel, for three very different responses, all quite illuminating and each raising important issues.
I’d love to hear from even more readers!
May 13, 2015 at 11:19 am
Finen (@FIGfinen)
We need to research on how a demand can be created among the excluded for an access to Mainstream Financial Services. What have been the reasons for lack of demand that allowed the Financial Institutions to let this segment remain unattended hitherto ? Vulnerability being an outcome of exclusion , the system ( even in disparate nations and societies) have failed to create a sense of yearning to access as a remedy of vulnerability ! Why ?
May 16, 2015 at 11:54 pm
Vinita Godinho
What makes individuals & micro-businesses financially resilient, and how can research inform ways to improve this? The notion of financial resilience i.e. the ability to recover (and thrive) after economic and/or other ‘shocks’ is one I’d like to study further, and then build on learnings to design appropriate supports – both financial (eg. appropriate products / services/ education etc.) and non-financial (eg. social networks/ peer learning & support/ community-based interventions etc.).