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> Posted by Sonja Kelly, Fellow, CFI
In 2013, Elisabeth Rhyne was asked what she was particularly excited about as she looked forward to the future of financial inclusion. Her response? “A second data point.”
Well, now we have that second data point. The 2014 Global Findex reports that 62 percent of people in the world have a bank or mobile money account, up from 51 percent in 2011, and those two points describe a line. Simply projecting that line forward takes the world to about 83 percent of people with accounts by the year 2020. But of course, that’s not the whole story…
The Global Findex encouragingly articulates some concrete steps that governments and providers can take to accelerate progress toward financial access. I would venture to guess that these steps would bridge the gap between the projected 83 percent and the full 100 percent by 2020 (you can read about the World Bank’s goal of universal access by 2020 here).
So let’s just assume that universal access will be a reality by 2020. We can envision a world in the near future where people receive wages, government payments, and remittances into their bank accounts. Businesses spend less on payroll and have fewer risks than if they paid out in cash. Governments avoid corruption associated with social benefit payments by having a cheaper G2P system that entails fewer human intermediaries. Remittances are cheap—or even free—and go directly into the recipient’s bank account. Cause for celebration, right?
Well, yes, but not so fast.
(click to enlarge)
> Posted by Sonja Kelly, Fellow, CFI
Since the release of our paper, Aging and Financial Inclusion: An Opportunity, I have been considering the challenge of market segmentation using the life course. This is not unexplored terrain at the Center for Financial Inclusion. Beth Rhyne articulated a life course approach during our Looking Through the Demographic Window project, which we have captured in the infographic embedded at right. I have been hearing from microfinance institutions that some efforts are underway to segment clients by their life stage, though this remains a relatively untouched area in the industry. For a great example of segmentation, however, I only had to look to the spam filter on my email.
Most of the emails that get caught in my spam filter are about body image. I receive messages advertising dieting pills, on the one quick fix to reduce belly fat (you won’t believe which celebrities use it!), and how to get toned abs within a week. This makes sense—I work out regularly, and I (try to) watch what I eat. The emails are tailored to me.
In chatting with my colleagues, I find that they also receive targeted emails. Some women in our office who are older than me receive emails for walk-in tubs. Singles get emails that point them to dating websites. Some of the younger men in our office get emails that refer to “satisfying” their girlfriends. And the spam filters of older men in our office collect emails about (ahem) performance-enhancing pills.
These are, of course, gross generalizations—the life course cannot possibly be reduced to dieting, walk-in tubs, and bedroom performance. But why is it that the email caught in my spam filter is more skilled at customer segmentation using the life course than my financial institution’s product line? Even more than being successful at segmenting a potential client base, spam marketers are successful at moving this potential client base to action, according to MailChimp. They have a simple message and a call to action. Their “click rates,” or the rate at which people click on links, are higher than average.
> Posted by Sonja Kelly, Fellow, CFI
Participants in a workshop on aging and financial inclusion, organized by the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and HelpAge, held last week in New York City at MetLife.
When we wrote about the topic of aging in our recently-released paper Aging and Financial Inclusion: An Opportunity, I have to admit that I was skeptical that any stakeholders would be motivated to action — regardless of how compelling the paper was. Aging, I thought, is something people feel uncomfortable talking about, whether because they worry about their own old age, or that of their parents, or because they consider older people an uninteresting market segment. Whatever the reason, I was worried that our effort to call attention to this issue would fizzle out and fade into the internet abyss.
I was thrilled to be proved wrong.
Last week, discussing the new paper in our various meetings in Washington, D.C. and in New York City and in a global webinar, we learned that much more is happening in this area than we had initially known, and that more people are willing to consider what aging may mean in their own work than we expected.
> Posted by Center Staff
Last week Aging and Financial Inclusion: An Opportunity was released, a new FI2020 report from CFI and HelpAge International supported by MetLife Foundation. The report examines the unmet financing needs of older adults, an area of increasing importance as global demographic shifts see the rapid expansion of this population segment. Within 25 years, the percent of the world’s population over age 60 will nearly double.
As part of the report’s launch, HelpAge International’s Head of Policy Eppu Mikkonen-Jeanneret, MetLife Foundation’s Financial Inclusion Lead Evelyn Stark, and CFI’s Managing Director Elisabeth Rhyne sat down to discuss the project and its findings. The conversation, among its topics, touched on the scale of the demographic shifts at hand, the opportunities in these changes, where we are with pension services, and action areas for policymakers, providers, and support organizations.
> Posted by Sonja Kelly, Fellow, CFI
Marisol is a 69-year-old woman in Aguablanca, a mid-sized community near the coast in Colombia. She hasn’t saved much for her older years. She receives a small social pension—about a dollar per day—from the public pension program, Colombia Mayor. While it provides an income floor for her, Marisol would like to be working as an entrepreneur. She even has a plan: “If I had a little capital, I could buy chicken legs, beef, and bananas here at a cheap price and then sell them in the Pacific towns at three or four times the price. And then I could bring back fish from the coast to sell here at the fairs.” But she cannot get a loan because of the age caps on credit at the financial institutions that operate in her area.
Marisol explains that it is not her lack of zeal or a declining health that is keeping her from increasing her income through this business dream of hers. “Strength and desire do not fail me,” she says. “It’s the money that I lack.”
Marisol was one of the people that we interviewed as part of the creation of an issue paper on Aging and Financial Inclusion, a project conducted by the Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign and in collaboration with HelpAge International. Her story is not unique—many older people report being denied access to credit and insurance in their later years. Most older people who had low or informal income when they were younger have not saved for their older years.
The new paper examines the unmet financing needs of older adults, a population segment growing rapidly in developing countries. With a focus on Latin America, the paper discusses the barriers to and market opportunities in expanding financial access to aging populations.
> Posted by Center Staff
A new micro-pension platform targeting those working as domestic laborers, appropriately named Gift a Pension, launched in India last month. The platform is run by the Micro Pension Foundation (MPF) nonprofit and gives employers of domestic laborers a convenient way to support their workers in enrolling for the National Pension Scheme (NPS) Lite government product, a smaller version of the NPS offering. Across the country an estimated 40 million work for households in roles including maids, guards, cooks, and drivers. In the weeks since the program opened, over 1,000 domestic employers have registered themselves and gifted pensions to their workers. The platform offers more than its name suggests, as gifting workers five-year term life insurance is also available.
Here’s how the service works. First, MPF encourages employers ensure that their workers understand the structure and benefits of any accounts before enrollment happens. The Gift a Pension site includes a collection of educational tools and videos for employers to use to aid their workers’ familiarity with products and with the importance of managing finances for the long-term. Once this initial learning phase is complete, the employer registers themselves with the Gift a Pension site and enrolls their worker using information from the various documents that satisfy the necessary know-your-customer requirements. To open the account, the employer pays a one-time servicing fee (Rs 300) as well as the first contribution into the account. The worker then receives in the mail a guide to go along with their new account and their personal prepaid pension card. In a few weeks’ time the worker will also receive a government-issued Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN).
CFI and HelpAge’s New Research Initiative Examines the Financial Needs of Older Persons
> Posted by Eric Zuehlke, Web and Communications Director, CFI
Proportion of the Population that is Elderly (click to enlarge)
A few years ago, my 90-year-old grandfather moved from Japan, where he had lived his entire life, to live with my parents in Virginia. Although he was retired and living comfortably, the death of my grandmother left him without an adequate support system. With his healthy pension and public assistance from the Japanese government, mixed with the security of living with my parents, he is well cared for. I’d say he is financially included. But on a global scale, he’s one of the lucky ones. All his supports – close family, a pension, good health care, and insurance – are inadequate for many. And the need for appropriate services is growing.
The facts speak for themselves. Between 2010-2020, the population of older persons will almost double in middle-income countries and increase by 40 percent worldwide. Yet despite this growing population, the provision of financial services is woefully inadequate. One in four older people in low and middle-income countries do not have a pension, and most pensions are inadequate to meet individual needs. Not only are financial services lacking, we don’t even fully understand financial inclusion in older age. The mismatch between the scale of the need and the attention devoted to it is staggering.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
#506202603 / gettyimages.com
In most places around the world the subject of pensions is a sore one. In 2012, for example, in looking at arguably the crème of private employers, Fortune 100 companies, only 30 offered their U.S. new hires pension plans, down from 47 in 2008. For public sector employees in the U.S. in the same year, the pension plans of 26 states were less than 70 percent funded. In lower and middle-income countries where financial security is weaker, the situation is even worse. In India, the pension system only covers roughly 12 percent of the population.
The severity of these figures is amplified when we look at demographic trends. Between 2010 and 2020, the population of older adults will almost double in middle-income countries. Worldwide over the decade, it will increase by 40 percent. By 2050, there will be roughly 1.5 billion older adults, 315 million of whom will be in India.
Aging presents unique challenges and opportunities to the financial inclusion industry. During a session at the Microcredit Summit in Merida, Mexico a few weeks ago, five panelists met to discuss this topic. John Hatch (FINCA), Pilar Contreras (HelpAge), Caroline van Dullemen (World Granny), Reynold Walter (REDCAMIF), and myself all acknowledged the demographic reality—as populations age, if countries have not helped their societies and economies to prepare, they will face a global train wreck in the form of older people without adequate means of support and support systems that are overwhelmed. Financial inclusion can and should play a unique role in helping both individuals and whole countries mitigate risks.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
#AA000029 / gettyimages.com
We would like to invite you—yes you—to lend your voice to our Financial Inclusion 2020 research on the issue of financial inclusion and aging.
The financial inclusion community has, with a few bright exceptions, been slow to recognize how rapidly the global population is aging, which is problematic considering the unique financial needs of this older population and the extent of this population growth. The statistics are stunning – in 1950, globally, 1 in 20 was above the age of 65; by 2050, it will be 1 in 5. The growth in the population of older adults is happening not just in developed countries, but everywhere. This demographic trend presents not only significant issues for the global economy, but also significant opportunities for inclusion that will affect people of all ages.
We would love to hear your opinion. Do you have a few minutes today to lend your voice to the conversation?
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