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> Posted by Center Staff
> Posted by Ignacio Mas, Senior Fellow, Council for Emerging Market Economies at the Fletcher School
Here are my best wishes for the CFI community, to be sung to the tune of the last bit of the twelve days of Christmas:
On the twelfth day of financial inclusion my true donor sent to me:
Twelve human centered designers
Eleven groundtruths validated
Ten agent trainings
Nine peer networks learning
Eight logs a-framing
Seven innovation challenges
Six rapid prototypes
Five fast failings
Four big data thingies
Three evidence bases
Two RCTs evaluating
And an e-money issuer license.
> Posted by Center Staff
The latest edition of the Financial Inclusion 2020 News Feed, our weekly online magazine sharing the big news in banking the unbanked, is now available. Among the stories in this week’s edition are: Omidyar Network investing in eCurrency Mint, a company that has developed a new technology that enables central banks to issue digital fiat currency; FMO, the Dutch development bank, providing a five-year US$10 million loan to benefit VisionFund International’s MFIs in rural Africa; Tyler Wry, a professor of management at Wharton, discussing his research on how patriarchal power manifests itself in microfinance. Here are a few more details:
- Omidyar’s investment in eCurrency Mint was made through the firm’s Financial Inclusion Initiative. The digital fiat currency, called eCurrency, is issued by a central bank and has the same legal and monetary status as notes and coins – differentiating it from the various forms of private sector digital value available today.
- FMO’s investment in VisionFund International’s African MFI network will help support the growth of these institutions via debt capital. Additionally, FMO provided a US$275,000 capacity development grant to support VisionFund in creating an innovative approach to disaster resilient microfinance.
- In a video interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Wry discusses findings on gender and microfinance from his recent paper “Bringing Societal Institutions Back In: How Patriarchy Affects Social Outreach”. The baseline finding from the research is that when you have a high level of patriarchy in the state, in religion, in the professions, and in the family, it makes it harder for microfinance organizations to lend to them for a number of different reasons.
For more information on these and other stories, read the latest issue of the FI2020 News Feed here, and make sure to subscribe to the weekly online magazine by entering your email address in the right-hand menu so you can be notified when the latest issue comes out.
Have you come across a story or initiative you think we should cover? Email your ideas to Jeffrey Riecke at .
> Posted by María José Roa, Center for Latin American Monetary Studies, CEMLA
Central banks and bank superintendencies play a fundamental role in developing financial education and inclusion programs, either as members or leaders of organizing committees. In order to better understand the role of the region’s central banks in financial education and inclusion programs, the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (CEMLA) and Banco de la República, Colombia, surveyed 23 central banks and 17 superintendencies in a study that provides a general overview of their financial education and inclusion programs.
Central banks are the main promoters of Financial Education (FE) programs in most countries of the region. These institutions make alliances or coordinate with other public and private players for developing such programs. The content and objectives of the FE programs in central banks have evolved, particularly after the recent financial crisis. Since the beginning, all the central banks have offered content regarding their history and main functions. They use this to strengthen the institution’s image, the effectiveness of monetary policy and build agents’ credibility in inflation expectations. However, after the crisis, some central banks began to consider broader content that would help the population make better financial decisions on a day-to-day basis. Besides better personal financial decision-making, some central banks also mentioned that financial education should also pursue broader objectives such as financial stability and economic growth.
The central banks offer a wide variety of programs and services, including general talks, web pages, educational material, contests and theater. The main target groups are primary and secondary school students, followed by the general public. The latter is linked to the fact that an increasing number of central banks are promoting the inclusion of FE in the school curriculum. In general, assessment of the programs continues to be an unfinished task for the region’s central banks, particularly when talking about experimental assessment.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
Time Magazine has just named Angela Merkel Person of the Year. In this post I hereby make CFI’s own designation: India is CFI’s “Financial Inclusion Country of the Year.” In the recently released Global Microscope 2015, India was the star performer. It improved its benchmarking score by more than any country (10 points on our scale of 1-100), rising in the ranking to fourth place overall.
The Microscope measures the quality of the policy, regulation, and institutional environment for financial inclusion, scoring 55 countries on 12 indicators, and then ranking them. The 2015 Microscope Benchmarking Model takes the report deeper, and shows year-over-year changes for individual countries (see table). While India is not the top scoring country (that honor has been held by Peru, Colombia, and the Philippines for several years), it is the country that has shown the most dramatic positive change, particularly in five areas: regulatory and supervisory capacity for financial inclusion, prudential regulation, regulation and supervision of credit portfolios, regulation of electronic payments, and market conduct rules.
Global Microscope 2015 Scores for India
For more information see the 2015 Microscope Benchmarking Model.
What did India do that increased its score in 2015? Building on important groundwork laid in 2013 and 2014, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Prime Minister of India, and the financial sector worked together to implement important reforms.
> Posted by Maria Otero, Board Member, Oxfam America and former President and CEO, Accion
This article was originally published by Quartz.
This week’s climate change agreement is a major milestone that will shape our future, and CFI would like to mark the occasion by offering these reflections by former Accion President and CEO, Maria Otero, on the importance of climate action for the well-being of people living at the base of the pyramid. The post was written a few days before the convening in Paris. It is heartening to note that such a positive step forward has emerged.
On Dec. 10, 1948 representatives from around the world met in Paris to sign the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the aftermath of World War II. Sixty-seven years later, representatives from around the world are meeting there again to negotiate another monumental agreement: an international deal on climate change.
It may not seem like these global events are related but, in fact, climate change is one of the greatest human-rights challenges of our time. The signers of the Universal Declaration agreed that all people have the right to basic sustenance, protection, and freedom; including rights to food, health, shelter, and self-determination.
From the devastation caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, to the severe drought exacerbating the refugee crisis in Syria, extreme weather continues to result in severe, and often irreversible, social and economic harm to millions of people around the world. From hunger to homelessness, forced displacement, and loss of livelihoods, human rights are in jeopardy.
And so, in the spirit of what their predecessors achieved 67 years ago, negotiators at the climate talks in Paris must not only deliver a global deal that curbs climate change, but also one that upholds human rights.
In its recent report, “Extreme Carbon Inequality,” Oxfam looks at consumption emissions of rich and poor citizens in different countries based on data from the World Bank, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Centre for Global Development climate-change vulnerability index. We estimate that the world’s richest 10% produce half of carbon emissions, while the poorest 3.5 billion account for just a tenth.
Click here to read the rest of this article on Quartz.
> Posted by Hannah Sherman, Project Associate, CFI
Last month, CFI hosted the first-ever FI2020 Week, a week of global conversation to advance financial inclusion. We are pleased to announce that the week was a success, including 34 partners, over 300 participating organizations, and over 700 participants in hosted conversations, and resulting in over 100 calls to action. A new Financial Inclusion 2020 e-magazine sums up the week, with a focus on event highlights, social media activity, and calls to action.
As we synthesized the many conversations across the globe in this e-magazine, we found a few themes emerging. First and foremost, there was global recognition of the role that partnerships play in moving forward financial inclusion. Participants discussed partnerships between government institutions, between the public and private sector, between researchers and providers, between banks and fintech companies, and more as essential to reaching financial inclusion. Second, there continued to be enthusiasm about the role that new technology plays and will continue to play in accelerating financial inclusion. Finally, and encouragingly, a number of conversations underscored the importance of financial capability-building, with a focus on how clients better understand their financial lives and make more healthy financial decisions as an important part of inclusion.
> Posted by Center Staff
On Tuesday, the Smart Campaign recognized five Indian financial institutions with Smart Certification, acknowledging their high standards of client care: Arohan, Grameen Koota, Janalakshmi, Sonata, and Utkarsh.
The Smart Campaign’s Client Protection Certification Program contains a core set of standards against which institutions are evaluated by independent, third-party evaluators. Smart Certification publicly recognizes institutions providing financial services to low-income clients with a standard of care that upholds the microfinance industry’s seven Client Protection Principles. The Principles cover such critical practices as transparency, fair and respectful treatment, responsible pricing, and prevention of over-indebtedness. This is the third year in a row that the Campaign has recognized Smart-Certified Indian institutions at the annual Inclusive Finance India Summit in New Delhi.
Arohan Financial Services is a Kolkata-based MFI operating in five states and serving over 400,000 clients. Grameen Koota serves more than 673,000 rural clients through 222 branches located across the country. This is Grameen Koota’s recertification, as it was first Smart Certified two years ago, and through a recertification check-in, it has been able to extend the validity of its certificate for two years. Janalakshmi Financial Services is India’s largest urban microfinance organization, operating in 15 states through 229 branches, and has recently been awarded a Small Finance Bank licence by the RBI. Based in Lucknow, Sonata Finance has become one of the fastest-growing NBFC MFIs in northern India, with a network of 162 branches. Utkarsh Micro Finance serves over 170,000 clients through 92 branches in the northern states of India and has also recently been granted a Small Finance Bank license. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
I want to let you in on a secret: the best part of the Global Microscope 2015 is a hidden gem. It’s called the Microscope Benchmarking Model (admittedly it might benefit from a better name), and it provides a user-friendly deep-dive into each country and indicator. With this tool, you can go beyond the report, with insights on questions that we may have neglected to cover in the narrative. And you can slice and dice the data to your heart’s content.
For example, where is the best place to be an insurance provider if you want to work with low-income populations? It’s India, actually, with Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and the Philippines following. With two quick steps, the tool produced this map for me (click to enlarge):
The countries colored in red—including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Paraguay, and Tajikistan—are the worst places to be an insurance provider working with low-income populations.
So why is India the best?
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