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> Posted by Allyse McGrath, Specialist, CFI
Join us in accelerating financial inclusion conversations globally!
We are excited to announce the third annual Financial Inclusion Week, an initiative to drive the global conversation around financial inclusion. In 2015 and 2016, over 70 partner organizations brought together thousands of people worldwide to discuss the most pressing actions needed to advance financial inclusion globally. In 2017, from October 30 to November 3, we will continue the conversations from last year and engage an even wider community of stakeholders to explore this year’s theme: New Products, New Partnerships, New Potential.
Around the world, digital channels are revolutionizing the way that customers access financial products and transforming the landscape of the financial inclusion industry. Financial service providers are harnessing an array of new technologies, data, and schools of thought to re-configure their products and how they offer them. New providers, including fintech startups, are entering the inclusive finance fold and legacy providers are increasingly partnering with them to expand service offerings and reach previously under-served customer segments. These new products and new partnerships bring great potential for creating a more inclusive global financial ecosystem. However, they may also bring new problems – such as issues surrounding data security, transparency on mobile platforms, and discrimination in alternative credit scoring. During Financial Inclusion Week 2017, partner organizations around the globe will hold conversations focused on how new products and partnerships are advancing financial inclusion.
> Posted by Bobbi Gray, Research Director, Grameen Foundation
We need to ensure products and services help family units, not just individuals, thrive.
Writing in 1982, about Fred Astaire, Robert Thaves wrote “Sure he was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards…and in high heels.” Since then, this quote about two legendary dancers has been used to celebrate the skills and talents of women and to demonstrate their ability to juggle complexity and pull it off gracefully.
At Grameen Foundation, we celebrate women for the potential they carry for ending poverty and hunger. In fact, some statistics suggest that if women farmers had the same resources as their male counterparts, the number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by 150 million. Beyond access to quality farm inputs, credit, and land, we also know that when women have equal access to education, health services, and business services they can thrive economically. Helping mothers be healthy before and during pregnancy also results in healthier children and more productive societies. Women are a key driving force against poverty.
> Posted by Kelsey Truman, HBS-Accion Program Coordinator, CFI
Domestic abuse and violence against women (VAW) are pervasive and shocking. According to the World Bank, 38 percent of murders of women globally are committed through intimate partner violence. Globally, one-third of all women have experienced domestic or intimate partner violence. The World Health Organization even went so far as to call VAW a “global health problem of epidemic proportions.” Could financial services possibly play a role in improving this situation?
One of the largest hurdles in combating VAW around the world is women’s inability or unwillingness to seek help when they find themselves in abusive situations. In conjunction with fear, one important reason many women don’t seek help rests on their degree of financial dependency. That is, they don’t have enough money or economic resources necessary to establish themselves independently, much less pay for legal fees and so forth. Furthermore, women’s vulnerability to violence has been shown to increase with their relative level of poverty. If women are given options to easily and discreetly pursue financial options and open bank accounts independently of their husbands and other male family members, it could very well save their lives one day.
> Posted by Lisa Kienzle and Gigi Gatti, Grameen Foundation
Nanays will use the Panalo system to conduct transactions for clients and provide them with receipts.
Women make great digital financial service (DFS) agents: they are often savvy at managing liquidity, effective at building trust, and perhaps most importantly, they are more effective at onboarding other women into DFS than men. This makes the recruitment and training of women agents an important strategy for closing the gender gaps in digital financial services and technology, and for ultimately ensuring universal financial inclusion.
Men in developing markets still outpace women in account ownership by 9 percent. The technology gap is even larger – women are 14 percent less likely to own a mobile phone than men. Given the growing emphasis on digital solutions to drive financial inclusion, this technology gap could further widen the financial services gender divide if not explicitly taken into account in the design of digital solutions. Women agents are a crucial element of that design.
> Posted by Christy Stickney, Independent Consultant and CFI Fellow
Say the words ‘women’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ together and donors and philanthropists will rush to give you money. It’s one of the hot topics in development today.
But where are the women in small and medium enterprises (SMEs)? In my study with the Center for Financial Inclusion, Emerging SMEs: Secrets to Growth from Micro to Small Enterprise, I asked this question, both directly and indirectly, as I met with entrepreneurs who had started microenterprises that grew to be SMEs, with the help of finance from microfinance banks in Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. I called these growth-oriented businesses emerging SMEs. These are my observations about women’s involvement with emerging SMEs.
Only a very small proportion of emerging SMEs are led by women. In my research only one of fourteen of the high growth enterprises identified in the study was led by a woman. Although the access-to-credit hurdle had been largely addressed within the study group, as evidenced by their extensive business borrowing, women were highly underrepresented as leaders of emerging SMEs.
> Posted by Daniel Balson, Lead Specialist for Eurasia and MENA, the Smart Campaign
This is the fourth and final blog entry in a series exploring how financial services can be leveraged to assist refugee populations. This entry will consider the future of refugee financial services and what our sector can do to ensure that the future is an inclusive one that serves genuine needs and protects refugee rights.
Syrian refugees shop at a market with their bank card given by the Turkish Red Crescent.
It is worth asking whether the financial inclusion sector is at the forefront of the movement to financially include refugees. The humanitarian sector has long struggled to determine how to provide assistance during a crisis in a way that is sustainable, effective, and accountable. Recently, humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have begun considering whether it’s possible to use payments as an on-ramp for financial inclusion of refugees. Cash transfers have historically facilitated corruption and failed to make it into the hands of the people who needed it most. In-kind donations of goods such as tents, food, sleeping material and other items undermined local merchants who made their livelihoods selling these very goods. In response, the sector has begun experimenting with digital financial payments. In Afghanistan, for example, the World Food Program (WFP) has issued e-vouchers and mobile money to cover food aid. The first e-voucher pilot was carried out on a small user base of 603 recipients in Kabul for a three-month disbursement cycle from April to June 2014. The total value of e-vouchers disbursed was US$72,360. The program proved successful and the WFP launched several follow-on pilots across the country in the subsequent year.
> Posted by Guy Stuart, Ph.D., Executive Director, Microfinance Opportunities
Can government-to-person (G2P) payments to low-income beneficiaries translate into their formal financial inclusion? This might happen if those beneficiaries can gain experience in dealing with a formal financial service provider (FSP) when they pick up their payments. This is especially the case where the government pays the beneficiaries of the program through a digital channel, such as a debit card or mobile money, and the payment pick-up process gives beneficiaries the chance to interact directly with this new technology. Furthermore, given that G2P programs are often targeted at women, there is the potential for these programs to increase the inclusion of the half of the population traditionally more excluded from formal financial services.
As part of the CFI Fellows Program, Microfinance Opportunities, in partnership with the Pakistan Microfinance Network and Centro de Formación Empresarial de la Fundación de Mario Santo Domingo, looked at the relationship between G2P payments and financial inclusion. For this project we analyzed global survey data and conducted field research in Colombia and Pakistan—two countries with large, well-established G2P programs.
The focus group discussions with the beneficiaries of the Familias program in Colombia showed the potential of G2P programs to have a direct effect on enabling women to become comfortable with using digital channels to receive money. The women unanimously reported that they used their Familias debit cards to withdraw their G2P payment from an ATM without any help from anyone else. They did report that, at first, they needed help, but soon learned how to use the cards themselves without any problem.
Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
Financial Inclusion Forum UK event yesterday at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
This post is part of Financial Inclusion Week, a week of global conversation on advancing financial inclusion. This year’s theme is keeping clients first in a digital world. Throughout the week participants will share their thoughts in events and webinars, on social media, and through blog posts. Add your voice to the conversation using #FinclusionWeek.
We are one day into Financial Inclusion Week 2016 and are so excited to already see stakeholders from across the globe coming together to discuss the week’s theme of keeping clients first in a digital world. As our global financial ecosystem undergoes a digital revolution, we are presented with great opportunities and great challenges to extending financial services in a responsible manner. At CFI, we believe that access to financial services is not enough. We define financial inclusion as “a state in which everyone who can use them has access to a full suite of quality financial services provided at affordable prices, in a convenient manner, with respect and dignity. Additionally, financial services are delivered by a range of providers, in a stable, competitive market to financially capable clients.”
Keeping clients first in a digital world requires looking beyond access to the essentials of quality services and client treatment. Financial technology has the potential to improve access, as well as the potential to improve convenience, lower prices, and build financial capability. However, fintech also has the potential to take away some of the respect and dignity present in an in-person banking transaction, and it can present new risks. We hope that this week you will explore the best ways to ensure that this digital revolution is not compromising clients, but instead further protecting them against risks and empowering them through new channels.
What’s Happening
Financial Inclusion Forum UK: Last night in London, over 200 stakeholders gathered at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for a conversation focused on “The Progress and Future of Financial Inclusion.” The three-hour event, organized by the Financial Inclusion Forum UK, consisted of a keynote and two panel discussions. The first panel discussion, featuring representatives from CDC, VisionFund, and EBRD, and moderated by Yasmina McCarty of GSMA, assessed current progress in financial inclusion. The second panel looked to the future with panelists from Financial Services for All, DoPay, Leapfrog Labs, and the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation.
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