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> Posted by Amanda Lotz, Financial Inclusion 2020 Consultant, CFI
Microinsurance matters, especially as we see an increase in climate change related disasters.
On October 28, Alexia Latortue of the U.S. Treasury moderated the opening plenary of the Financial Inclusion 2020 Global Forum featuring two leaders in microinsurance, Michel Khalaf of MetLife and Martyn Parker of Swiss Re. One of Alexia’s remarks at the Global Forum deeply resonates with me today: “The occurrence of a risk event can set a family back an entire generation.” Among other things, she suggested, there are new and emerging risks linked to climate change.
Shortly after the Forum, we saw haunting evidence of this. On November 8, Typhoon Haiyan devastated much of the Visayas region in the Philippines, with the city of Tacloban being the hardest hit. Typhoon Haiyan is a reminder of why we must prepare to face natural disasters. Microinsurance is one form of advance preparation that can prove instrumental in the disaster rebuilding stage.
In a disaster prone country such as the Philippines, where over 41 percent of the population lives on under $2 per day, ensuring greater access to microinsurance could make an enormous impact. In the country’s rural areas, which encompass roughly half of Filipinos and about 80 percent of those living in poverty, agriculture is the primary source of income. Government data from 2009 indicates that poverty among fishermen is at 41 percent, with farmers close behind at 36 percent. Think about the opportunities for providing microinsurance to farmers and fishers, whose livelihoods and families depend on productive land and assets that can be tremendously affected by weather!
> Posted by Véronique Faber, Executive Director, Microinsurance Network
Konrad Valladares of the Peruvian Bank Association and Véronique Faber at the FI2020 Global Forum.
Three months ago, Jeremy Leach from Bankable Frontier Associates rightly asked in this same forum: “Microinsurance: Can the Cinderella of Financial Inclusion Join the Global Ball?” This question rang a bell with many practitioners and advocates in this field. Microinsurance is often the last service listed when talking about financial inclusion tools. However, credit, savings, and insurance work more effectively in combination rather than in sequence. In stimulating and maintaining financial inclusion, it is crucial that those with a limited income have a safety net preventing them from falling into poverty when hit by a crisis, catastrophic or lifecycle related, and become more resilient against future risks.
Since Leach’s blog post, the sector has been granted three wishes (by its fairy godmother or perhaps as a result of good common sense). If these wishes are used well, insurance for low-income people will be an integral part of any global financial inclusion strategy from now on.
The first wish came in the form of visibility and awareness raising. The opening panel at the Financial Inclusion 2020 Global Forum had representatives from MetLife and Swiss Re debating how financial inclusion factors like income growth, new technologies, and government prioritization play out in the context of insurance. For the rest of the conference, insurance was on every participant’s mind when thinking about the possibilities of what can be achieved in the next seven years. This is important because insurance is essential for sustainable development and financial inclusion.
> Posted by Elizabeth Davidson, Financial Inclusion 2020 Consultant
What’s Financial Inclusion 2020 going to do next? Since the conclusion of the FI2020 Global Forum just a few weeks ago, we’ve gotten this question a lot. For me, the more interesting question is, “What are you going to do?”
Over 140 Global Forum participants answered this question by filling out a postcard with their personal commitment to advancing financial inclusion.
Here’s a sampling of what financial inclusion leaders plan to do to advance to full financial inclusion by the year 2020.
Work together.
“Partner with government and the development community to not only launch scalable and relevant products but also build usage to ensure true financial inclusion.”
“Foster stronger collaboration through best practices between developed and developing countries.”
Increasing collaboration emerged as a huge theme, with over one-third of respondents referencing their commitment to increase work with other financial inclusion stakeholders and more than 20 participants identifying collaboration as the key component of their commitment. For us, this is exciting: collaboration is a key tenet of FI2020. We believe collaboration among different kinds of actors will be a big part of the solution to reaching full financial inclusion.
> Posted by Dave Grace, Managing Partner, Dave Grace & Associates
Dave Grace (at far left) during a roundtable session at the Global Forum.
This week I received my self-addressed postcard from the Financial Inclusion 2020 Global Forum reminding me of my personal commitment to help ensure the safety of consumers’ savings and rights as they join the financial system. My first reaction was how slow the post is, but on deeper reflection I recognized that the postcard arrived just at a time when I needed a reminder of my commitment.
In addition to the new connections made at the Global Forum, two comments stood out for me; one was rooted in the past and the other in the future.
Remembering the Past
When Michel Khalaf from MetLife described the company’s roots as an insurer for the working class and the legions of agents who went door-to-door collecting weekly premiums of $.05 or $.10 and dispensing financial advice, I instantly understood something important about my grandfather. Until then, I had just thought of him as a MetLife agent in the steel belt towns of the northeastern U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s. He left school at age nine to help the family make ends meet when his own father prematurely passed away. He first worked shoulder-to-shoulder in the coal mines with many other immigrants. His math skills and ability to work across ethnic groups enabled him to leave the mines and become a top agent for MetLife. He knew firsthand how dangerous the mining work was and how a temporary or permanent injury could be a huge setback for these vulnerable families. Once the Great Depression hit and people could not access their deposits in banks, many of his clients turned to my grandfather for financial help. He had some liquidity and became a de facto deposit insurer, paying people what he could and in the process becoming a larger creditor of the illiquid banks.
Anticipating the Future
While Michel Khalaf’s comments helped me piece together my own family history, what stood out more was the collective prediction by attendees in London that the most important story in the next five years will be the presence of a “bank run” on mobile money.
> Posted by Gino Picasso, CEO, GloboKas
Sendhil Mullainathan, Professor of Economics at Harvard
First and foremost I would like to thank all that were involved in organizing and sponsoring the FI2020 Global Forum. It was really an excellent conference.
Like all the others who attended this conference, I have attended dozens of conferences and they are all pretty much the same. I get to see old friends, make some new friends, and exchange some ideas, but usually there is very little that is fresh. The FI2020 Global Forum stands out in my mind because I walked away with a fresh perspective on the work we are all doing.
Dr. Sendhil Mullainathan’s presentation was a highlight because he provided a fresh perspective on what I consider the most important issue we touched on at the conference: we need to know our customer. I do not want to minimize the many other speakers and discussions, because all of these helped advance our work in some way. However, I think that a key takeaway is that we all must learn a lot more about the real needs, wants, and drives of our customers. We cannot talk about the BoP and forget that just like any other large demographic, there are many things that segment this group into differentiated consumer groups. And, like Sendhil taught us, some consumer behaviors are driven by factors that we are only beginning to understand.
> Posted by Monique Cohen, Independent Advisor, Founder and Past President, Microfinance Opportunities
Martyn Parker, Swiss Re; Michel Khalaf, MetLife; Alexia Latortue, U.S. Treasury
Addressing client needs, delivering appropriate products, ensuring consumer protection, and building people’s financial capabilities were themes repeatedly heard during FI2020. Taken together they represent important progress in the discourse around financial services for the poor. Not so long ago the mention of clients was limited to statistics; in particular, numbers of accounts. If you were in luck this data was differentiated by gender.
This new recognition that our clients are active not just passive players in our industry marks an important step forward. The concept of active clients emerged in numerous sessions during the FI2020 meeting. Alexia Latortue, formerly of CGAP, began by noting that designing products that would help clients mitigate shocks and loses is very important. For the poor to cope effectively with risk, physical presence, timeliness, and proximity to financial services is vital for enabling access. In one of the final sessions of the meeting, Innocent Ephraim from Vodacom echoed statements by others noting that listening to the clients is critical. Not doing so can be costly. He had been involved in launching a product based on what the provider thought was useful. The product bombed, forcing his team back to the drawing boards and to the identification of a product which made sense to the consumer because it reflected both their contexts and priorities.
While the client agenda in financial services is not new, it has only recently gained real traction. Despite the new thinking on this topic, the industry is still searching for common ground about what to do to become more client focused. Currently the stakeholders are struggling to define a common phrase book; our lexicon of many of the terms continues to be a work in progress. Everyone has her/his own meaning for financial capability and financial inclusion. The result can be confusing.
> Posted by Rani Deshpande, YouthSave Project Director, Save the Children
Two big financial inclusion gatherings in Europe a few weeks ago turned up the volume on bringing more people into the formal financial system — safely, meaningfully, and fast. With big trends poised to change the financial inclusion landscape, how can we harness them to expand savings opportunities for young people?
In London, the FI2020 convening brought together a who’s-who of leaders from the worlds of politics, banking, and microfinance as a culmination of the 18-month “roadmap to financial inclusion” process led by CFI. Discussions here centered largely on the biggest disruptive trends ensuring that, to paraphrase one speaker, financial inclusion will change more in the next 7 years than it has in the last 30. The comment reflects the general tone of the conversation, which was one of impatience or perhaps anticipation at this “inflection moment” created by the convergence of technological development and market dynamics.
According to CFI’s “Mapping the Invisible Market” study, the income of the bottom 40 percent of the world’s low- and middle-income economies will grow from $3 trillion to $5.8 trillion from 2010 to 2020. At the same time, other panelists pointed out that access to information (through mobile phones), the use of big data, and customer-centricity are creating game-changing new ways to reach and serve poor customers. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, one panelist urged the audience to “stop ‘innovating’ and start listening to clients” or to keep innovation “brain-dead” simple so that it can easily scale (critical given generally thin margins for BoP services). Usage, as opposed to access, was also highlighted as the new frontier of inclusion, with almost 50 percent of adults possessing accounts but only 7 percent in the developing world using them actively (> 2 transactions per month).
> Posted by Anne H. Hastings, Manager, Microfinance CEO Working Group
Global Forum Venue: The Lancaster London
As I traveled to London to attend the FI2020 Global Forum, my mind was filled with many thoughts. First was excitement that I had been invited to attend when I was still very much a microfinance practitioner. I was still in the process of adjusting after 17 years living in Haiti struggling to build an institution that would be a model of a client-centric, double bottom line microfinance institution (MFI) committed first and foremost to reaching the very poorest people in Haiti and providing them a pathway to a better life. For me, this meant providing them with a full range of financial and social services. My commitment to these clients had been solidified through my years in Haiti but also by my service on the Smart Campaign Steering Committee and the Board of the Social Performance Task Force and more recently by my role as a practitioner advisor to Truelift.
But now that I was in the plane and on my way, I had taken on a new role: Manager of the Microfinance CEO Working Group, a collaborative effort of the CEOs of eight pioneering global microfinance networks – Accion, FINCA, Freedom From Hunger, Grameen Foundation, Opportunity International, Pro Mujer, VisionFund International, and Women’s World Banking – all dedicated to advocating for more responsible microfinance practices and to instituting the highest standards of performance within their own MFIs. These eight CEOs represent 250 MFIs in 70 countries, serving some 40 million families. Suddenly I had been boosted from deep concerns about the future of poverty in one tiny country of 9.5 million to a preoccupation with the future of MFIs worldwide.
The Forum was a beautiful reflection of the often chaotic financial services marketplace of today where traditional banks, telecoms, retail stores, donors, investors, policymakers, regulators, and MFIs often collide in seeking to capture new markets. In attendance were the CEOs of institutions like Citi and MasterCard, along with several former Governors of Central Banks, technology innovators like the CEO of bKash, executives of insurance companies like MetLife and Swiss Re, Managing Directors of investment companies like Wolfensohn Fund Management, experts in alternative data systems like Cignifi. There were times when I thought maybe I had actually entered the wrong conference! Who were all these people, and what did they have to do with the future of microfinance?
> Posted by Larry Reed, Director, Microcredit Summit Campaign
Why does the Microcredit Summit Campaign wholeheartedly support the goal of “Finance for All by 2020?” Because we see it as an important step in reaching the larger goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.
From October 9 to 11 we held the Microcredit Summit in Manila on the theme “Partnerships against Poverty.” Delegates of the Summit drafted and approved the Partnerships against Poverty Summit Declaration, listing the principles that we will follow to insure that microfinance works as a worthy partner in the movement to end extreme poverty. The opening commitment of the declaration states:
First, we commit to putting the extreme poor first. Their voices must be heard in our movement, and they must be full participants in the process of improving their lives and our services. They are not only our clients, but also our biggest resource.
To better reach and serve the poorest and most vulnerable populations, we will ensure that we include women, children, the elderly, the disabled, refugees, the LGBT communities and members of cultural and religious minorities.
Achieving “Finance for All” means that we must develop financial products and services that meet the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable populations. The organizations partnering with the Microcredit Summit Campaign have committed themselves to work with governments, mobile network operators, payment providers, and others to help design and test these products.
> Posted by Alex Counts, President and CEO, Grameen Foundation
The Financial Inclusion 2020 Global Forum was a remarkable and historic convening. I was honored to have been invited to attend and co-facilitate an “ideas to action” roundtable about one of the five parts of the Roadmap to Financial Inclusion .
Immediately after the event I reached out to Elisabeth Rhyne to understand how I could help build on the groundwork laid at the conference. She suggested I write a blog post about my experience. My immediate reaction was that commenting on such a wide-ranging and successful effort was a bit daunting. But I felt it was worth a try.
Dissecting the Term “Financial Inclusion”
I will admit that I have warmed slowly to the language of financial inclusion and financial capability. Are these just new buzzwords for time-tested concepts? (And if so, why use them?) Let’s assume they are new concepts. If so, financial inclusion feels like more of a means than an end. For me, the end is the reduction of poverty and the empowerment of low-income women – so why not focus on those? If having a poor or even middle-class person simply open their first “no frills” bank account is considered a step towards financial inclusion, regardless of how useful or helpful that bank account is, is this banner a lackluster one to rally under? Further, it is not clear to me that the provision of quality financial services through informal financial institutions (however defined) is being properly valued in the financial inclusion agenda. Finally, does making “financial capability” something of a prerequisite for people accessing formal financial services effectively let financial institutions off the hook for meeting clients where they are and designing appropriate products for them?
While my apprehension about these concepts has not entirely dissipated, I emerged from the Global Forum feeling that this campaign for full financial inclusion, at least as defined by CFI, is evolving as a powerful rallying point for a diverse coalition of providers, regulators, technologists, researchers, and activists. The notion of full inclusion is essential. I now see financial capability as a concept that defines the end state when financial education (through whatever means) is done effectively. The Forum probably had a similar impact on many others – helping them travel from a place of confusion or even wariness towards strong alignment and shared purpose.
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