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> Posted by the Access to Finance Unit, Multilateral Investment Fund, Inter-American Development Bank
With fertility rates falling and life expectancy on the rise, the world’s population is aging rapidly. And though increasing longevity can be considered a triumph of development, for Latin America and the Caribbean, this rapid aging presents a serious challenge: the population is not financially prepared to support itself during old age.
According to the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB’s) book Better Pensions, Better Jobs, by the year 2050 there will be three times as many people over the age of 65 as there are today in the region. However, if trends continue, by this date only one in two seniors will have saved for a pension. This means that about 130 million workers are not saving for their pension.
In response, several countries have taken efforts towards increasing pension coverage to lower-income and vulnerable segments through non-contributory pension schemes. From 1990 to 2013, 13 countries in the region implemented programs aimed at expanding non-contributory pensions. Still, even those that receive pensions are finding their value, generally less than US$10 per day, insufficient to cover their basic needs. This means that current and future generations of seniors will have to rely on alternative sources of income to complement their pensions.
> Posted by Sonja Kelly, Fellow, CFI
Participants in a workshop on aging and financial inclusion, organized by the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and HelpAge, held last week in New York City at MetLife.
When we wrote about the topic of aging in our recently-released paper Aging and Financial Inclusion: An Opportunity, I have to admit that I was skeptical that any stakeholders would be motivated to action — regardless of how compelling the paper was. Aging, I thought, is something people feel uncomfortable talking about, whether because they worry about their own old age, or that of their parents, or because they consider older people an uninteresting market segment. Whatever the reason, I was worried that our effort to call attention to this issue would fizzle out and fade into the internet abyss.
I was thrilled to be proved wrong.
Last week, discussing the new paper in our various meetings in Washington, D.C. and in New York City and in a global webinar, we learned that much more is happening in this area than we had initially known, and that more people are willing to consider what aging may mean in their own work than we expected.
> Posted by Sonja Kelly, Fellow, CFI
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in taking a close look at financial inclusion efforts around the world, it’s that context matters. That’s why we are excited to be part of the team releasing the Global Microscope 2014: The Enabling Environment for Financial Inclusion. The Microscope is carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) with sponsorship and guidance from the Multilateral Investment Fund of the IDB, CAF, and Citi. The Microscope evaluates the environment for financial inclusion in 55 different countries and provides powerful signals to policymakers in each country on their progress. Which countries topped the list and which have the most room to grow?
We’ll tell you, but first, it’s important to know what the results mean. Each country inspected in the Microscope is assessed on 12 indicators that consider best practices in national regulatory environments and institutional support for providers serving clients at the base of the pyramid. Indicators range from government support for financial inclusion, to supervision of microfinance and other financial products, the status of credit reporting, regulations governing mobile banking and, last but not least, consumer protection.
This year is an important one in the publication’s eight year history because the focus shifted from microfinance to the environment for financial inclusion, a process that involved adapting the framework to account for today’s diversity of providers and products. What we were surprised by, however, was just how little a difference this made in the rankings. We charted last year’s results on the microfinance environment against this year’s results on the financial inclusion environment and we found a very high correlation between the two (see figure below). Environments that are enabling for microfinance are often environments that are enabling for financial inclusion. Six countries from last year’s top 10 were in this year’s top ten. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
Peru ranks as the developing country with the best environment for microfinance, followed by Bolivia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Kenya, in that order. Latin America and the Caribbean is ranked as the best region in the world for microfinance, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and lastly the Middle East and North Africa. Globally, the microfinance industry is improving, fueled largely by an increase in credit bureaus, improving client protection, and the spread of regulatory frameworks for mobile banking.
These are a few of the big takeaways from the Global Microscope on the Microfinance Business Environment 2013, which was launched yesterday in Guadalajara at the IDB’s 2013 Foromic conference. Now in its seventh year, the Global Microscope annual series examines the environment for microfinance – and increasingly financial inclusion – by considering the national regulatory environment and the corresponding institutional framework.
Originally developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit in collaboration with the Multilateral Investment Fund and CAF, this year’s study is also sponsored by Citi Microfinance and CFI. This year’s report scores 55 countries, and in general, the global picture is promising. Since last year, 30 countries improved their scores, 19 fell back, and the scores of six countries remained the same. The majority of improvements this year came from advancements in institutional frameworks. The scores for regulatory framework and practices mostly declined.
As a region, Latin America and the Caribbean countries claimed half the slots in the global top ten, with Peru maintaining its previous ranking as the top country in part through improvements in regulation for mobile banking. Unlike the rising score for Peru, Bolivia’s score fell, due to restrictive new legislation, although not far enough to dislodge Bolivia from its number 2 ranking.
Support for the Smart Campaign will allow client protection assessments, certification testing, pilot projects, and translation and dissemination of tools to foster adherence to Client Protection Principles at leading microfinance institutions.
Washington, DC, January 30, 2012 — The Smart Campaign, a global initiative to incorporate strong client protection principles across the microfinance industry, will receive support from the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group to help Latin American and Caribbean microfinance institutions incorporate client protection practices into their operations.
The support will work to institutionalize adherence to the Smart Campaign’s Client Protection Principles, which include appropriate product design and delivery, prevention of over-indebtedness, transparency, responsible pricing, fair and respectful treatment of clients, privacy of client data, and mechanisms for complaint resolution, in four primary ways:
- Understanding the current state of client protection practice via in-depth Client Protection Assessments of twenty microfinance institutions (MFIs);
- Changing client protection practices via pilot implementation of recommendations from the Smart Assessments;
- Piloting the certification process of ten microfinance institutions as a crucial step to raise client protection standards in the industry; and
- Making Smart Campaign tools more broadly available in Latin America through translation and dissemination of those tools and materials into Spanish and Portuguese.
“Support from the MIF comes at a critical time in the life of the Campaign and will ensure that the experience of microfinance institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean is taken into account when defining adequate standards for client protection worldwide,” said Isabelle Barrès, Smart Campaign Director. Read the rest of this entry »
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