You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Global Findex’ tag.
> Posted by Center Staff
Happy International Women’s Day! We hope you were able to partake in the worldwide celebration yesterday. If you missed out on the action, not to fear. Plenty of activities are still underway. And of course, acknowledging the achievements of women and advancing the movement for gender equality are practices best executed every day.
To spotlight the importance of financial inclusion for women, here’s a snapshot of recent research in this area. To follow are ways that you can join groups, including the United Nations and Grameen Foundation in getting involved.
In honor of International Women’s Day, last week Gallup shared global statistics on how women view their lives – graded on a 10-point scale from suffering to struggling to thriving. About a quarter of all women questioned view themselves as thriving, while the rest chose either struggling or suffering. The two areas cited most often as important for improving their lives were jobs and personal safety. While the latter is a shocking finding, this post starts with jobs, though ultimately we will see connections to personal safety as well. Global estimates pin men as almost twice as likely as women to be in full-time formal employment. In Mexico, for example, less than 50 percent of women are part of the labor force, compared to 85 percent of men.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
If you are in a wheelchair in Guatemala, lots of nice people will be willing to carry you up the stairs… But that’s not the point. A recent conversation with Alan Tenenbaum, a disability inclusion advocate based in Guatemala, offered me that perspective. Tenenbaum, who became a quadriplegic after suffering a spinal cord injury in his late twenties, focuses his work on the Latin American country. Those looking to advance disability inclusion in Guatemala, like in most countries, have their work cut out for them. Countrywide, according to Team Around the Child, less than two percent of Guatemalan adults with disabilities have work, most children with disabilities do not attend school, and only a small percentage of those in need of wheelchairs have one. To date, according to a recent paper from Trickle Up, most efforts to advance disability inclusion in Guatemala have been limited to urban areas – even though 50 percent of the country’s population resides in rural areas, where economic opportunities are harder to come by.
I sat down with Tenenbaum to get a sense for progress made and challenges still present in Guatemala for persons with disabilities (PwDs). Since his injury, Tenenbaum wrote a book sharing his story, En la Silla de Morfeo (On Morpheus’ Chair), started and led a foundation, Sigue Avanzando, and has regularly given speeches for schools, universities, news outlets, and private companies. At the heart of these efforts is what he identifies as the biggest barrier to disability inclusion: public awareness.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
#109419838 / gettyimages.com
Last week the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced substantial increases throughout the country’s microfinance market: growth in the volume of loans dispersed to microentrepreneurs, in the number of microcredit institutions offering savings services, and in the return on equity of rural banks with microfinance operations. Concerning regulation and institutional support, the recently released 2014 Global Microscope found that the Philippines has the best environment in Asia for financial inclusion.
In 2014, loans extended to microentrepreneurs in the Philippines totaled P9.3 billion (US$209 million) as of June, according to figures reported by BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. at the recent Citi Microentrepreneurship Awards in Manila – a roughly 7 percent increase over last year’s figure. On savings, in early 2012 only 22 banks in the country offered micro-deposit accounts. Now, 69 of the Philippines’ 183 banks with microcredit operations take deposits, with a total of 1.7 million micro-deposit accounts. Beyond credit and savings, 86 of the country’s institutions offering microcredit also provide microinsurance and 26 provide electronic banking services.
Adam Mooney is the CEO of Good Shepherd Microfinance, Australia’s largest microfinance organization.
As the first day of spring arrives in the Southern Hemisphere, we see new buds emerging, fresh blooms, and a new sense of hope and optimism. In Perth, Western Australia, the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) meets Monday, September 1 at a forum to stimulate, coordinate, and reflect on action to bring about financial inclusion. I am hopeful as the GPFI prepares recommendations for the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November this year, it will commit to powerful actions to boost the well-being of at least 2.5 billion people living in poverty around the world.
There is clear evidence that improving the economic well-being of the poorest third of the world’s population will have a profoundly positive impact on all people. Economic mobility and resilience at the family and community level directly leads to increased security, human connectedness, and hope for everyone. It also enables self-directed action to realize one’s own dreams and aspirations, however modest, leading to overall contentment. Yet despite such a compelling economic and social case, poverty and inclusion remain ideologically contested concepts where causality is often polarized into either inadequate human behavior or opaque environmental factors.
Speaking at the C20 Summit last month, I suggested that targeted inclusive finance around the world can and will be a key driver of economic growth, especially through production, employment, and education. It is not a coincidence that the number of people living in poverty is the same as those that are unable to access appropriate financial services, as measured by the World Bank’s Findex reports. These reports state that only half the world’s adults have bank accounts and of those, only 15 percent believe that their needs are understood and met by the products they have access to.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly, Fellow, CFI
We are in full World Cup fervor in the Accion offices around the world, with jerseys making appearances at global staff meetings, water cooler conversations centering on surprise advancements (and eliminations), and a high incidence of lingering trips to the conference room screen to check scores in between meetings and deadlines. You could say things are getting a little heated as the group of teams still in the running gets smaller.
There have been a few attempts to use this global competition as an opportunity to better understand our world. The Wall Street Journal published a “World Cup of Everything Else,” where countries can be matched up on categories from the hottest weather to the biggest eaters of seafood, and Dean Karlan produced a set of predictions based on population, poverty level, and interest in soccer to assess which country would experience the greatest increase in happiness with a World Cup victory (spoiler: Nigeria would have had the most aggregate happiness if it had won the tournament).
But what if the World Cup were a competition based on financial inclusion indicators? If we were to create a bracket where the country with the highest level of financial inclusion advanced, the European countries would all advance, which in my opinion wouldn’t be very interesting.
What if, however, we use the World Cup system to see where the highest number of financially excluded people are? We crunched the numbers to show you, of the countries that made it to Brazil for the competition, who would “win” the title of “highest number of financially excluded people.” Basing winners on the countries with the largest number of people without a formal bank account, we noticed a few surprises.
Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly and Ruben Marquez, CFI and Bancomer
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – Shakespeare
While Juliet’s musings on the essence of her Romeo might be poetic, she is quite wrong. Words determine a great deal about how we think about things—and one word change could change hundreds of thousands of people’s use of financial products.
Percent of People Who Report Saving in the Past Year
In Mexico, if you were to ask those at the base of the pyramid whether they save, they would likely tell you no. CFI’s Country Profiles show the Global Findex Data in the figure at right.
When asked whether they had saved any money in the past year, roughly 14 percent of people in the bottom 40 percent of the economy in Mexico answered yes. This same group of people in all upper middle income economies (of which Mexico was a part at the time of the survey) were about twice as likely to say yes to this question.
Does this mean that the poor in Mexico just don’t prioritize savings? Probably not.
In Mexico, there is a difference between the word for “saving” (ahorrar) and the word for “keeping” (guardar). When you ask people at the base of the pyramid whether they “keep” money for the future, they are much more likely to answer yes.
The Findex survey (the source of the above data) may have inadvertently run into this problem in Mexico. The difference between two words could explain the low incidence of saving reported at the base of the pyramid compared to countries with a similar income level.
When we take this language difference into account, there are implications for institutional knowledge, financial education, and product marketing.
On this front, Bancomer in Mexico has found that there is a reorientation to be done within the bank itself—while Bancomer is listening to clients, for listening to be effective it must be listening for the right language. Within the bank, integrating the vernacular of low-income clients has led to new views on this income segment. Past market research has included the question of whether potential clients are saving—with dismal results. With the recognition that this population is saving, but just calling it something else, there is a different perception of the kinds of products that customers might be interested in.
> Posted by Sonja E. Kelly and Veronica Trujillo, Fellow and Consultant, CFI and MIF/IDB
Where can you find up-to-date and comparable information on the state of microfinance and financial inclusion? Which are the most trusted sources? These issues were recently explored in a research effort designed to lay the groundwork for broadening the scope of the EIU Global Microscope on the Business Environment for Microfinance from an emphasis on microfinance to financial inclusion. As part of this process, Fusion Research conducted a detailed assessment on the relevance of the Microscope.
As sponsors of the Microscope, what we found through the study was a pleasant surprise. Seventy-nine percent of people surveyed (more than 500 microfinance sector stakeholders from different countries around the world, with a high proportion of participants coming from Latin America and the Caribbean) were at least aware of the Microscope, and most of these people have used or consulted it. Closely trailing the Microscope, 76 percent of people surveyed were aware of the MIX Country and MFI Benchmark Reports.
Market Analysis of Microfinance Resources
In terms of actual use of the tools, the MIX leads the way, almost tied with the Microscope. When we look at use of the tools by stakeholder type, we see a greater diversity in which tools different kinds of people use.
Investors are most and equally likely to use the EIU Country Reports and the Microscope. Their need to know the country microfinance context and level of market development to make better decisions is likely to explain such preference. Those who work for financial services entities seem to like the detail and competition data that the MIX provides. Their second most used source is the Microscope, revealing the importance for them of country regulatory and operative environment. Foundations appear to use the Microscope and MIX data in tandem. The Global Findex (The World Bank Global Financial Inclusion Index) is most used by regulators/policymakers and DFIs/foundations, while academics, think tanks, and those working in business or consulting are most likely to use the Global Microscope.
Respondents to the survey, on average, reported using between three and four resources in their work. In terms of usefulness, MIX reports and the Global Microscope on Microfinance were rated as very useful for more than 55 percent of the people interviewed.
> Posted by Amanda Lotz, Financial Inclusion 2020 Consultant, CFI
Tomorrow, people around the world will celebrate International Women’s Day. In honor of the day, and the tremendous impact that financial services can have for women, we’d like to highlight some of the top resources from the past year that focus on financial inclusion of women. Though there are many great resources out there, below are a few that have caught our attention.
1. Findex Notes: Women and Financial Inclusion
Drawing from the Global Findex Database, the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation created a briefing on the state of women’s access to and use of financial services globally. It’s a concise snapshot of financial inclusion data on women. It highlights gaps that persist for women, as compared to men, globally and across regions. It looks at variations in account ownership for savings and credit, as well as barriers to usage identified by women. And if you’re looking for more, I suggest exploring the Findex database or the CFI Data Explorer and conducting your own analyses!
2. Promoting Women’s Financial Inclusion: A Toolkit
DFID and GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development prepared a toolkit aimed at policymakers, donors, and NGOs who want to learn how to design and implement programs to enhance the financial inclusion of women. It provides insight into factors that contribute to financial exclusion of women and offers recommendations to address access barriers. In addition, the toolkit provides methods for client segmentation as well as several illustrative case studies. Rather than suggesting focusing on women exclusively, the toolkit also recommends understanding the distinct needs of men.
> Posted by Dr. Susan Johnson, Senior Lecturer in International Development, University of Bath
Recent research has given us much better data on the difference in access to formal financial services between men and women. The figure below gives these gaps by region based on the Global Findex dataset. With this evidence for the gender gap, what we really want to know is: what is it about being a woman or man that creates the gap? That is, are these gaps the result of factors such as women having less education, lower incomes, and being less likely to have formal employment? Or do they arise from legal factors such as property rights, inheritance rights, gender norms about autonomy, mobility, etc.? Or, perhaps women behave inherently differently and are more risk averse. Or does being a woman matter for another reason, even when all these factors are taken into account? If it does, then we might need to look further for other sources of discrimination in the market. These might include the behaviour of the financial institutions themselves.
It is possible to use specialist techniques to find out whether gender matters when other variables, such as education and income, are controlled for. If the gender variable (also called the gender dummy as it is a variable in the equation that only takes a value of one for a woman or zero for a man) is statistically significant when all of these factors are included then it suggests that there is still an aspect of gender at work that the other variables have not accounted for. Recently economists have been using these techniques on data sets about access to financial services to find out whether being female matters for access. But, here’s the rub. We seem to be getting rather different results.
> Posted by Caitlin Sanford, Lanna Lome-Ieremia, and Sameer Chand, Bankable Frontier Associates, Central Bank of Samoa, and Reserve Bank of Fiji
Another version of this post is published on the Alliance for Financial Inclusion website.
Sigatoka Market, Sigatoka, Fiji
Until now there have been few sources of publicly available data about financial access and usage in the Pacific Islands. Although individual central banks are measuring and tracking progress towards financial inclusion, the small island countries in the Pacific region have often been left out of international financial inclusion datasets, such as the Global Findex. The IMF Financial Access Survey captures some key financial inclusion indicators but this does not include all the countries from the Pacific.
The Pacific Islands Working Group on financial inclusion (PIWG) of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion came together this year to define and collect financial inclusion data specifically tailored to the region. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu participated in this data project. While the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) have elaborated key sets of financial inclusion indicators to be used for global comparison, in some instances, individual countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Tanzania, and others have crafted broader sets of country-level indicators. This is the first time a broader set of common indicators have been developed at a regional level.
Facebook
Twitter
Recent Comments