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> Posted by Danielle Piskadlo, Manager, Investing in Inclusive Finance, CFI
“Would you like to save $10 today?” In the United States, it seems you can’t shop anywhere these days without hearing this question at the checkout counter. According to Card Hub, there are at least 134 large retailers in the U.S. offering credit cards. And of course, these offers usually sound great. Who wouldn’t want to save money on purchases? All you have to do is fill out a short form on the spot… It’s easy.
These savings can come at a price. Here are a few of my concerns about credit cards offered by the likes of Target, Macys, Sears, TJ Maxx, and others.
- Confusion between Rewards and Credit Cards – Many retailers provide rewards or loyalty card programs. For instance, you can earn points at CVS with a card or get gas reward points at Stop and Shop. These rewards and loyalty cards are often similar to retail credit cards in that they are offered at the register, you fill out a short form to join, and you present the cards when checking out. For customers with limited financial literacy or limited English language skills, the difference between reward/loyalty cards and retail credit cards can be very confusing. It’s blurred even more by the fact that most credit cards also offer rewards – like cash back or bonus air miles. Of course, there are big differences between a card that one swipes to simply “earn points” and a card that allows one to make purchases on credit.
> Posted by Eric Noggle, Research Director, Microfinance Opportunities
In 2014, Financial Sector Deepening Zambia and Microfinance Opportunities (MFO) began the Zambia Financial Diaries—a 52-week study of the financial lives of 352 low-income Zambians. The study included 92 smallholder farmers—individuals who own small plots of land on which they grew crops or tended livestock for sale and/or subsistence.
The Zambian smallholder farmers represent only a tiny fraction of the estimated 500 million smallholder households worldwide. Smallholder farmers are a large livelihood group and addressing their diverse needs—from crop diversification to market integration—is a strategic priority for the World Bank Group, country-level governments, and non-government organizations.
Understanding smallholder farmers’ income patterns is critical for designing financial services that meet their financial needs. The common perception of farmers’ income patterns is that they are lumpy and linked to agricultural cycles, but the income patterns identified in MFO’s Zambia Financial Diaries challenge this perception.
Income Patterns
The farmers in MFO’s study had lower and more variable incomes than respondents who earned the majority of their income from informal, off-farm sources (“informal workers”). The farmers had 4.3 income sources on average, often relying on casual labor or running informal shops to supplement their agricultural activities, while informal workers had 3.3 sources. Farmers’ average weekly earnings were low—only about $19 per week on average compared to $50 for informal workers (based on June 2015 exchange rates). The farmers also experienced more week-to-week income variation, as measured by the coefficient of variation (COV), than other respondents who work in the informal economy.
> Posted by Ben Mandell, International Programs Manager, Water.org
Access to safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation are true necessities for healthy families. Yet, access rates for water and sanitation remain stubbornly low in most low-income countries. The negative health implications can be dire and include diarrheal disease which can result in premature mortality and childhood malnutrition and stunting. From an economic perspective, “The health consequences of poor sanitation are substantial and contribute to over US$50 billion in GDP loss annually,” according to a new India focused learning note jointly developed by Water.org and the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).
In the learning note, Water.org and WSP, both active globally in working to expand access to water and sanitation, collaborate to share their research and findings on how household lending can help drive improved water and sanitation uptake as well as provide economic and social benefits to local financial organizations.
Water.org, through its WaterCredit program, provides capacity-building grants and technical assistance to create, pilot, and scale water and sanitation financing. Currently, WaterCredit provides funding to microfinance providers and NGOs to support the creation of programs and these partners then leverage funding from banks and capital markets to disburse loans to people in need. Accordingly, “Water.org has provided US$11.3 million in subsidies to financial institutions and NGO partners worldwide, which in turn have disbursed over US$120 million in loans reaching 2.4 million people.”
> Posted by Habitat for Humanity International
Microfinance in Cambodia has seen tremendous growth throughout the past two decades. The first microfinance institutions were initially established by relief organizations to provide cash transfers to poor families, to build incomes and reduce poverty. Fast forward to 2015, and the financial landscape is thriving with over 45 regulated microfinance institutions (MFIs) operating in the country. Improved financial access is contributing to 7.3 percent GDP growth and reducing poverty rates for those living under $2 per day.
Despite impressive economic growth, housing quality for many Cambodians remains below standards. A 2014 study conducted by the Ministry of Planning in Cambodia revealed that nearly 27 percent of homes in rural areas still use temporary materials for walls and roughly 83 percent have temporary floors.
As migration brings more people to urban and peri-urban areas, and as a young population seeks to build new housing, there is a growing need for financial products that match the term and usage that housing requires. Recently, housing microfinance (usually characterized by larger loan amounts and longer terms than traditional microfinance) has gained traction in Cambodia as a funding source for home construction and home improvements for low income families.
> Posted by Bruce J. MacDonald, Vice President, Communications & Operations, CFI
In New York yesterday to celebrate the launch of the FI2020 Progress Report (and Accion’s and Citi’s 50-year partnership, and the awarding of the first Accion Edward W. Claugus Award – Accion never does anything by halves…), we had the privilege of an audience with Dr. Daniel Schydlowsky.
Dr. Schydlowsky, recipient of said award, hardly needs introducing. As Superintendent of Banking, Insurance & Private Pension Fund Administrators for Peru, and as chair of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, he symbolizes the gold standard of financial inclusion regulation. Scratch that – he is the gold standard. Peru has ranked at the top of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Microscope report for seven consecutive years. And to paraphrase the old E.F. Hutton TV ad, when Daniel Schydlowsky speaks, people listen. “We can perfectly well keep banking systems safe, and still do something for inclusion,” he said, explaining his philosophy of regulation (and thereby, perhaps, Peru’s standing). “Indeed, the more we include, the safer we’re making the banking system.”
Like our new Progress Report, Schydlowsky outlined his view of what lies ahead and what he’s excited about. First up: The promise of new loan-origination techniques. Making microloans is an artisanal craft, and thus expensive. But he is optimistic about the promise of new developments: big data, customer-relationship tools, and psychometric training (again, as is our Progress Report). Come to Peru, he urged innovators, where you will find a willing partner and audience.
> Posted by Carol Caruso, Senior Vice President, Channels & Technology, Accion
Providing micro financial services is often a costly endeavor. As practiced in most places today, it involves many manual processes which limit the potential for scaling up and expose vulnerability to poor service, errors, and fraud. Furthermore, as telco operators and fintech companies bring services to customers through new distribution mechanisms, microfinance banks (MFBs) need to explore innovative ways to competitively deliver their services. Hence, it is promising to see a rise in the use of tablets, smartphones, and other devices housing applications that digitize field operations. Digital field applications (DFAs) offer MFBs a way to take advantage of technology to solve some of these challenges. Globally MFBs have deployed DFAs in a wide variety of ways. For example, loan officers equipped with DFAs can process loan applications and answer client inquiries in the field, eliminating paper forms, digitizing data, and saving time and money for organizations and their clients. Bringing financial services out to clients can achieve a much-needed personal touch and can even increase the richness of the client interaction. For example, client education and consumer protection awareness can be more effective when digital messages are delivered by a field staff member. DFAs can also improve credit operations. When assessing loan applications and risks, field officers can operate more efficiently if digitally equipped.
In order for MFBs to successfully leverage these tools, both for their and their clients’ benefit, they must understand their business case, and incorporate best practices for implementation that have been derived from lessons learned by others. There is no shortage of pilots that have been halted due to challenges arising from lack of experience and understanding – despite hardware availability or subsidies.
With this in mind, Accion’s Channels & Technology group have published a case study aiming to provide some clarity on the impact of DFA use by examining the business case, implementation process, and effects for three MFBs: Ujjivan Financial Services in India, Musoni Kenya, and Opportunity Bank Serbia (OBS). Our case study presents a consolidated review of the findings from the three MFBs, with an accompanying Excel-based business case toolkit, available for MFBs to examine the potential impact a DFA might have on their business. Individual cases presenting the findings from each institution are also available – here, here, and here.
> Posted by Eric Zuehlke, Web and Communications Director, CFI
The following post was originally published on the Accion Ambassadors blog.
At some point during our walk down the dusty, uneven road packed with minibuses and motorcycles inches away from hitting me, unfamiliar music and sounds blasting from unseen speakers, people selling everything from plastic toys to Adidas shorts to cell phones to furniture, and a profusion of life and color all around, I thought to myself, “This is exactly what I was hoping to see in Tanzania.”
My fellow Accion Ambassador Javier and I were walking with a staff member from Akiba’s headquarters office and Dominik, the assistant branch manager at Akiba’s Temeke branch. Akiba is a commercial microfinance institution based in Dar es Salaam with branches throughout Tanzania. The four of us were off to visit clients down the street from the branch office. Before our walk, Dominik shared some background on Akiba’s work and their clients.
While every Akiba client has a deposit account, not every client has a loan. So for example, the Temeke branch serves over 4,000 clients – 2,100 have a loan while around 2,000 only have deposit accounts. However, “savings is a big problem,” Dominik tells us. “People are not saving regularly.” This is partially because Akiba has only recently promoted savings as part of their client outreach and education. The Temeke branch’s clients are all in the neighborhood and are food vendors, manage their own clothing or cell phone shops, or own other small businesses. The branch’s clients tend to be at Akiba’s “medium” level, with loans ranging from 20 million to 50 million shillings (about US$10,000 to US$25,000 – a much higher amount than I was expecting to be normal). Group solidarity loans are also popular and are smaller loans ranging from 200,000 to 5 million shillings (US$100 to US$2,500).
PERC, a “think and do tank” advancing financial inclusion through information services, has been effective in addressing credit invisibility by advocating the use of alternative data in credit reporting, including in Australia, Brazil, China, Kenya, and the U.S. We invited Michael Turner, PERC’s CEO, to submit an opinion piece, and are publishing the results in a three-part series. The following is part one.
Recently, a number of players have flaunted an impressive array of promising digital technologies to expand credit access, advertising nothing less than a full on revolution in financial inclusion. While the promise of many of these solutions is inarguable, in most cases they are limited to lower-value, higher-interest consumption loans at best, or, at worst, are at risk of being useless as they suffer from the classic error of putting the cart before the horse. The principle limitation on these solutions is a lack of access to sufficient quantities of regularly reported, high-quality, predictive data upon which to base credit decisions and develop credit products.
Consider the case of Safaricom, which revolutionized the payment systems market in Kenya with its M-Pesa offering. The rapid uptake of M-Pesa by lower-income Kenyans was proof positive of the value of digital financial services and spawned a wave of investment into hundreds of copycat service providers around the world.
> Posted by Sonja Kelly, CFI, and Thierry van Bastelaer, Abt Associates, American University, and the Microinsurance Network
Even 10 years ago, most of us would never have thought that the words “insurance” and “low-income households in the developing world” would be heard in the same sentence. It would have been as strange as, say, hearing the words “really good coffee” and “Washington, D.C.” in the same sentence.
But times have changed. Thanks to tremendous innovation in product design, pricing, and distribution systems, insurance is increasingly affordable to low-income households that are looking for ways to protect themselves from daily risky events. We should take a few moments to stop and celebrate this development. (Pause for celebration.) Thank you.
At the same time, we should learn from the history of the broader financial inclusion field. It took many years for the majority of the field to admit that credit alone can’t meet all the financial needs of poor families. Hopefully the excitement over insurance will not similarly delay the realization that it alone can’t address all the financial protection needs of these families. A great variety of financial products is needed to address an even greater diversity of needs.
So, over a cup of really good coffee one afternoon in Washington, D.C., we sketched out a possible framework that articulates where insurance fits into the product spectrum for financial risk protection vis-a-vis savings and loans.¹
We thought of risk protection expenses along two axes: frequency and size, and plotted expenses on a 2×2 table (forgive our back-of-the-napkin scribble).
Financially inclusive products are best designed to finance risk management expenses in the top left and bottom right quadrants of the graph. High-frequency inexpensive outlays can, when accumulating over time, significantly disrupt the cash flows of low-income families. Similarly, low-frequency expensive payments can ruin years of carefully planned asset accumulation. Low-frequency and inexpensive events (bottom left) can usually be covered by cash, and high-frequency expensive events (top right) are usually beyond the reach of most financial inclusion products.
> Posted by Center Staff
Blog posts. Twitter feeds. Facebook updates. Email listservs. Google Alerts. Lunchtime conversations… We all have our ways, however handy and effective, of trying to stay abreast of what’s happening around the world. For those interested in financial inclusion, this is quite the challenge. The release of new products, partnerships, publications, and policies is a constant. But at CFI’s Financial Inclusion 2020 (FI2020) project, combing the world for the latest inclusion insights, trends, and developments is part of what we do. So, we decided to go one step further.
Starting today, each week the FI2020 team will bring you the big news in financial inclusion in an online magazine, the Financial Inclusion 2020 News Feed. We’ll pull from all over to spotlight great new stories, initiatives, videos, podcasts, and more. To give you a sense, the collection of pieces that make up this week’s edition touch on:
- JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s new report on U.S. households’ financial resilience, Weathering Volatility
- AllAfrica’s recent article on the new partnership between Tigo and Juntos in Tanzania
- The Guardian’s interactive post that visualizes borrowing trends globally
- A World Bank video on assessing if microloans really make a difference
To check out the first edition, click here, and make sure to subscribe so you can be notified when the latest issue comes out.
Have you come across a story or initiative you think we should cover? Email your ideas to us at .
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