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> Posted by Susy Cheston, Senior Advisor, CFI
The Credit Reporting section of the FI2020 e-zine (click to read)
The Financial Inclusion 2020 Round-Up 2014 e-zine, found on the CFI website, takes a look at progress toward financial inclusion in the year following the FI2020 Global Forum. It was at the Global Forum that five Roadmaps to Financial Inclusion were presented after two years of being developed and debated by dozens of financial inclusion experts. Now, imagine the editorial challenge of collapsing a year’s worth of activity around each Roadmap into just two pages each.
While it’s a fun read, I admit to a little cognitive dissonance as I page through the Round-Up. The brief analyses of where we stand around each of the Roadmaps to Financial Inclusion can be summed up in the quote “we’re not as far along as we think we are.” While that quote was about the Technology Roadmap, it could just as easily be said of the other Roadmaps: Financial Capability, Addressing Customer Needs, Client Protection, and Credit Reporting.
Yet despite the clear-eyed look at the ongoing challenges, the e-zine also tells a story of intense and productive activity by a wide range of actors. Legacy financial service providers—the heavy hitters with big resources and even greater reach—are investing heavily in financial inclusion. It’s not just for corporate social responsibility any more; it’s part of a new business strategy inspired by the discovery of an untapped and (they hope) profitable new market. Sprinkled in and around those vignettes are stories of scrappy start-ups doing the social entrepreneurship thing. Some of those services may not make it past 2015, but some of them have a “why didn’t I think of that” inevitability about them. The diversity of actors and the energy are impressive.
The huge potential for digital finance to reach the last mile of the financially excluded
> Posted by Peer Stein, Director, IFC Access to Finance Advisory
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. This blog series spotlights financial inclusion efforts around the globe, shares insights from the FI2020 consultative process and highlights findings from “Mapping the Invisible Market.”
Last week’s seminar on digital finance at the 2014 World Bank Group / IMF Spring Meetings convened innovators, private sector leaders, and government representatives to discuss the potential innovative business models and new technologies have in reaching and empowering the financially excluded poor and small businesses faster and with greater scale, while contributing significantly to the World Bank Group goal of universal access to finance by year 2020. The session highlighted the diversity of business models that use technology to reach the excluded market segment, showcased by innovators from bKash in Bangladesh, Airtel Money-Africa, and Berlin-based Mobisol operating in rural East Africa.
I’d like to share three key points that emerged from the forum.
First, multi-stakeholder collaboration is a must.
None of the featured innovators is a traditional bank or financial institution but each one realizes the importance of partnering with banks and other players in this dynamic space. For example, bKash was born from a fusion of BRAC Bank and Money in Motion, and continues to operate as a subsidiary of BRAC Bank, holding 80 percent of the mobile money market in Bangladesh. With such an adoption success within two and a half years, recording 90,000 digital money agents and 11.6 million registered users, in the words of Kamal Quadir, CEO, “bKash is now a Bengali verb [synonymous with ‘to send money’].” Chidi Okpala, Director of Airtel Money-Africa, a mobile money service with an active base of 5 million customers, reinforced that one of the factors of success in this diverse market is the need to position your mobile money service for stakeholder collaboration rather than competition. The real competitor is cash. Walt Macnee, president of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, emphasized the company’s connecting and collaborative role focused on ensuring interoperable platforms among a diversity of players.
> 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 Julie Fawn Earne, Senior Microfinance Specialist, IFC
The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.
A good number of greenfield MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa now have sufficient track records to enable an analysis of their institutional performance and role in the market. A stocktaking of their experiences to date can help inform decisions that will shape the coming generation of investment in African microfinance. Could this business model play a central role in increasing financial inclusion on the continent, where currently only about a quarter of adults have access to formal financial services?
But first, let’s start with the context. Financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are provided by a disparate group of relatively small providers. At one end of the spectrum are indigenous NGOs and informal microfinance providers. On the other end are commercial banks, which offer a full range of banking products and services but generally exclude the vast majority of the population. Between these two poles are cooperatives, government institutions, such as postal banks, and other non-bank financial institutions, which fill some of the gaps but have failed to reach widespread sustainability and outreach. According to the MIX Market, in 2009 less than half of the MFIs in SSA (of all institutional types) demonstrated financial sustainability. As a result, few of these institutions are likely to grow to meet the needs of large numbers of unbanked households and enterprises.
In light of this, a number of global holding companies and investors, largely comprised of development finance institutions (DFIs) set out around the turn of the Millennium to develop a group of well-managed, sustainable, and commercially-oriented formal financial institutions that offer a range of financial products through a scalable operating model. Today, there are more than 30 greenfield MFIs spread over at least 12 African countries, including frontier markets such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Liberia. While many greenfield MFIs are still young, the analysis in Greenfield MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Business Model for Advancing Access to Finance, published last month by IFC, CGAP, and The MasterCard Foundation, shows signs of solid institution building for the longer term. While there is a range of microfinance providers in SSA, the proliferation of greenfield MFIs expands the commercial end of the spectrum with regulated, mostly deposit-taking institutions, focused on low-income individuals, microenterprises, and small businesses. At the end of 2012, 31 greenfield MFIs had more than 700,000 loan accounts, an aggregate loan portfolio of $527 million, and close to 2 million deposit accounts with an aggregate balance of $445 million. At the end of 2012, collectively they employed more than 11,000 local staff and had 700 branches.
> Posted by Madeleine Dy, Program Specialist, CFI
The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.
Effective risk governance is critical for the growth and sustainability of an MFI, and board members play an important role in overseeing, monitoring, and controlling institutional risks. Governing Banks: MFI Edition, the latest publication of the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Running with Risk project, is a comprehensive risk and governance manual that follows a newly appointed director of an MFI bank on his journey to acquire the understanding and skills needed to meet the unique challenges of his role. Through the different characters the director meets, including the Chair of the Board, CEO, and Chair of the Risk Committee of the Board, the author Karla Brom holds a candid, educational, and easy-to-read conversation. She discusses a multitude of topics, including best practices in determining board composition, risk management roles and responsibilities, and risk appetite.
Governing Banks: MFI Edition builds on the work of the Governing Banks supplement created by IFC’s Global Corporate Governance Forum, and modifies the document to take into account the specifics of regulated microfinance institutions. For the MFI Edition, valuable input and oversight were provided by an advisory team comprised of Lauren Burnhill of One Planet Ventures, David Risser of NestorAdvisors, Mike Lubrano of Cartica Capital, Keith Waitt of Consultancy Matters, and Deborah Drake of the CFI. The publication is the third output of the Running with Risk project, which seeks to raise awareness about the importance of effective risk governance for institutional growth and sustainability. The first two publications were Microfinance – A Risky Business and Ten Risk Questions for Every MFI Board.
> Posted by Adriana Magdas, Senior Associate, CFI
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. This blog series spotlights financial inclusion efforts around the globe, shares insights from the FI2020 consultative process and highlights findings from “Mapping the Invisible Market.”
A sneak-peek version of the early findings from the Roadmap to Financial Inclusion is now available on our website. Developed through a consultative process of more than 40 experts spanning the public and private sectors, these key messages suggest what stakeholders across industries and regions should do to take action and advance financial inclusion considerably in the next decade.
They answer questions such as: what role can technology providers play in increasing the financial capability of clients in the regions where they operate? How can providers and consumer groups develop means for clients to raise their own voices?
The focus areas of these early findings are based on the seven-point priority action agenda identified by the CFI in 2011 through the Opportunities and Obstacles to Financial Inclusion survey of industry practitioners, donors, and investors. They are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »
$350,000 grant will fund training, on-site assessments, and tools to foster adherence to Client Protection Principles at leading Indian MFIs.
Washington, DC, October 25, 2011 — The Smart Campaign, a global initiative to incorporate strong client protection principles across the microfinance industry, received a grant of US$350,000 from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to help Indian MFIs incorporate client protection practices into their operations.
The Campaign will work with Indian MFIs to develop the tools and resources they need to deliver transparent and prudent financial services to all clients. The grant will fund training sessions, on-site assessments and tools to institutionalize adherence to the Smart Campaign’s Client Protection Principles, which include: (1) appropriate product design and delivery, (2) prevention of over-indebtedness, (3) transparency, (4) responsible pricing, (5) fair and respectful treatment of clients, (6) privacy of client data, and (7) mechanisms for complaint resolution.
The work will be carried out in a number of ways:
- Client Protection Principles Training – The Campaign will conduct eight training sessions, each to be attended by staff from eight to ten MFIs, focused on building the Client Protection Principles into company policy and practice. Read the rest of this entry »
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