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> Posted by Center Staff
After great anticipation, three years’ worth to be exact, the 2017 Global Findex Database was officially released this morning. The Global Findex is the authoritative data source on global progress toward financial inclusion. Released every three years, the Global Findex surveys more than 150,000 adults in 144 economies to better understand how people access and use financial services to make payments, and also to save and borrow.
Since the 2014 Findex, the percent of the global population that has a bank account with a financial institution or mobile money service rose from 62 percent to 69 percent. Five-hundred and fifteen million individuals opened an account for the first time over the past three years, reducing the unbanked population to 1.7 billion adults worldwide. However, the new data also reveal critical shortcomings in progress. For instance, the financial inclusion gender gap didn’t improve. Globally, women remain 7 percent less likely to own a bank account than men.
Here are a few of the 2017 Global Findex’s high-level statistics:
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> Posted by Drew Corbyn and Sascha Brandt, GOGLA
The following post was originally published on the GOGLA blog and has been republished with permission.
The consumer is the central figure of the off-grid solar sector. Demand from consumers has inspired our member companies to provide an ever-growing range of quality off-grid solar energy products and services. It is thus perhaps not surprising the industry is now taking the lead in developing a sector-wide code of conduct on consumer protection. It has committed to develop and implement a set of principles on how off-grid solar companies engage with customers.
GOGLA will spearhead the project with support from the DOEN Foundation. Over the next few months, we will work with members, investors and partner organizations to compile a code of conduct. The Sustainability Working Group will serve as the main platform for members to develop and agree to the framework and how it is operationalized. Their engagement is vital in producing a practical and meaningful framework that serves as the de-facto standard for off-grid solar consumer protection.
Which topics would you most want to see researched?
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Director of Research, CFI
Hi there. I would love your help as we select topics for our 2018 CFI Fellows research.
CFI is getting ready to launch the request for proposals for our 2018 Fellows cohort (a lot of you have been asking when it’s coming out, and the answer is SOON!). The CFI Fellows Program is designed to respond to questions we think are critical to the future of financial inclusion. Fellows come from many perspectives, including both relatively junior and senior well-known researchers, and including researchers who have been in the financial inclusion community for a long time and some who are perceptive outsiders. We share a set of topics for study, and ask interested researchers to submit research proposals that address the topic of their interest.
Our semi-final list of questions is long, and we ask for your help refining or prioritizing them – or adding new ones. We’ve enabled comments at the bottom of this post for your feedback. Alternatively, feel free to email me at skelly@accion.org.
Here are the questions we are currently considering:
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It’s not just social media. We need a fresh look at how financial data is protected, too.
> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director, CFI
Embed from Getty ImagesMark Zuckerberg defended Facebook’s handling of customer data yesterday before the U.S. Senate, and many of us at Accion and the Center for Financial Inclusion were riveted. Not that the testimony was especially compelling as television spectacle, but because the issues at stake are so important both for our own lives and for our work.
I did a quick scan of the staff here in our Washington, D.C. office, and would like to share some of their thoughts.
How new product solutions, business models, and partnerships can advance electronic payments and financial inclusion
> Posted by Dan Salazar, Vice President, Product Development and Innovation, Acceptance and Solutions, Mastercard
Ten years ago, 85 percent of the world’s transactions were in cash and checks, and 2.5 billion people were unbanked. Since then, we’ve all been working hard as an industry to develop technology that will give the unbanked access to the world of digital payments. Mastercard has connected more than 360 million people to formal financial services – more than half-way to our commitment of reaching 500 million people by 2020. And the company has set a goal of connecting 40 million micro and small merchants to our payments network by 2021.
While more and more people and businesses are becoming “financially included,” there are still 2 billion people today who don’t have bank accounts, and over the last 10 years we’ve only managed to reduce cash usage by 2 percent. Up to now, we’ve been operating on the assumption that if we displace cash and simultaneously provide access to electronic payments, the unbanked will come. But, at this rate, financial inclusion for those remaining 2 billion people will take 200 years.
Data from InterMedia reveal stagnant progress across key financial inclusion indicators in Nigeria
> Posted by Nadia van de Walle, Charles Wanga, and Ridhi Sahai, Financial Inclusion Insights, InterMedia
The number of adults who are considered financially included in Nigeria has not improved since 2014, according to InterMedia’s Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) 2016 Annual Report and Survey Data. The survey defines financial inclusion as adults with a registered account at a full-service financial institution. Financial inclusion in Nigeria dropped slightly from 37 percent in 2015 to 35 percent in 2016 (Figure 1), lagging behind the three other African countries surveyed as part of the FII program. In 2016, FII data showed 69 percent of Kenyans, 54 percent of Tanzanians, and 40 percent of Ugandans were financially included.
InterMedia recently completed and published the 2016 Annual Report and Survey Data on the status of financial inclusion in Nigeria. The report, based on a nationally-representative survey of over 6,000 Nigerian adults, provides insight into Nigerians’ financial lives while tracking trends in attitudes, access, use and demand for financial services.
(click to enlarge)
With an economy that is large enough to account for almost a third of Africa’s total GDP, why might Nigeria be lagging its peers?
> Posted by Sonja Kelly and Elisabeth Rhyne, Director of Research and Managing Director, CFI
The World Bank is just days from releasing the next version of its Global Financial Inclusion Index (Findex), the authoritative data source on global progress toward financial inclusion. The dataset, which tracks financial inclusion in 150 countries, is released once every three years, and we have been waiting eagerly to see how things have changed since 2014. We are confident that the numbers will show enormous progress on the World Bank’s goal of universal access to financial accounts. But we wonder whether the news will also indicate that people are actually using those accounts and whether financial services are helping them achieve financial health, gain resilience and pursue opportunity – the ultimate goals of financial inclusion.
After we high-five the World Bank team for a job well-done, here are a few things that we will be looking for when we examine the new Findex numbers:
Designing a mobile money product that meets client needs while bringing tangible benefits to the financial institution
> Posted by Habiba Balogun, Habiba Balogun Consulting
The following is part of a blog series spotlighting views from participants in the Africa Board Fellowship (ABF). For more from Habiba, an interview with her can be found here.
With over 160 million mobile phones in use in Nigeria out of a population of 180 million, high mobile penetration is a major factor in the country in achieving seamless payments.
In 2016, at Accion Microfinance Bank (AMfB) in Nigeria, where I serve as a board member, we introduced a mobile banking product called Brighta 143. The product is USSD (unstructured supplementary service data), so it runs on both basic and smart phones, and it has shown great potential to expand financial inclusion as well as bring benefits to our institution.
But of course, rolling out a successful mobile money product is hardly straightforward.
> Posted by Robin Brazier, Communications and Operations Associate, the Smart Campaign
March 15 is World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD), a day marked by the consumer movement each year to raise global awareness about consumer rights and needs. It’s an opportunity to demand that the rights of all consumers are respected and protected, and to protest against market abuses and social injustices which undermine those rights. The Smart Campaign marks this occasion by talking about the importance of transparency and grievance redressal as key tenets of client protection and building consumer trust.
WCRD’s theme this year is “Making Digital Marketplaces Fairer.” With the volume of online transactions increasing, consumers are exposed to new – sometimes not fully understood – risks. For this reason, WCRD 2018 is calling for access to fair and secure internet for all, action against scams and fraud, and better consumer protection online.
According to Consumers International, nearly half of consumers that have access to internet but do not shop online cite lack of trust as the reason. Similarly, almost 70 percent of online consumers worry their digital payments are unsafe. What contributes to this lack of trust? The causes vary, but they often hinge on two things: lack of transparency and insufficient grievance redressal mechanisms.
More investor types, more ways to invest, more emphasis on impact
> Posted by Danielle Piskadlo, Director, Investing in Inclusive Finance, CFI
The future of impact investing was the hottest topic on my recent tour of the Boston impact investing conference circuit, which included the New England Impact Investing Initiative/Building a Sustainable Investment Community (BASIC), Boston’s Net Impact Summit, and the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. My list of all the 2018 trends discussed at these events, has 20 trends on it! Wow, that’s a busy year. This blog post is my attempt to distill these trends into four buckets (many of which are linked) and see whether CFI readers agree with this general direction for impact investing in the year ahead.
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