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> Posted by Joy Kim, Financial Inclusion Analyst, MIX
Figure 1 (click to enlarge)
Today we launched the Senegal Financial Inclusion Workbook 2.0. Since its first iteration in 2013, MIX added a significant number of additional datasets at a more granular level: The total number of financial access points amassed increased from 1,903 to 10,155. Most of the datasets can now be inspected at the commune level, an important change from the initial workbook where the datasets were only displayed at the region level. In addition, we were able to map microfinance correspondents that did not exist back in 2013.
Senegal Makes Significant Progress in a Few Short Years
Since March 2012, when Senegal’s Ministry of Economics and Finance signed the Maya Declaration, it has introduced greater regulatory oversight of the microfinance industry. At the same time, the agency has helped create an enabling environment for the provision of digital financial services. Efforts to improve data and measurement, consumer protection, and implementation of a national financial inclusion strategy are ongoing. As a first step in implementing a national financial inclusion strategy, the Microfinance Branch (DMF) of the Senegalese Ministry in charge of Microfinance and Solidarity together with the National Agency of Statistics and Demography (ANSD) launched a national survey on financial inclusion in January of 2015. The survey is intended to investigate physical access to financial services, users of formal and informal services, financial needs of households, and more.
> Posted by Saran Sidime, Operations Assistant, the Smart Campaign
West Africa is the second-fastest growing regional economy in Africa. Its GDP is more than double that of East Africa. However, its impact investing landscape doesn’t reflect this.
There are currently 45 impact investors active in the region, including 14 development finance institutions (DFIs) and 31 non-DFIs. Direct impact investments deployed in the region totaled $6.8 billion between 2005 and 2015. This is small relative to East Africa, which has over 150 investors and $9.3 billion in deployments on the books for roughly that same time period. Nevertheless, the investing trends in West Africa are encouraging, according to The Landscape for Impact Investing in West Africa, the third in a series of regional market landscaping studies published by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN).
The main barriers to impact investment in the region, according to the GIIN, include a lack of investment readiness among entrepreneurs and investees (in part due to difficulty obtaining bank financing), unpredictable policy environments, difficulty raising capital locally (among fund managers) compared to global standards, few exit examples, and macroeconomic and political instability. That is a truly daunting array of challenges. While in recent years there has been strong growth and investment in ecosystem actors such as incubators, accelerators, associations, and technical assistance providers, the ecosystem is not at sufficient scale to service the needs of the region.
> Posted by Juan Blanco, Associate, Financial Inclusion 2020, CFI
In 2012, developed countries spent 8.6 percent of GDP on insurance, while developing countries spent only 2.7 percent. Traditional insurance providers face difficulties when serving low-income and unbanked customers with traditional insurance products in areas like transaction size, client education, and outreach, among others. However, mobile technologies have disrupted the way insurance is delivered and in the last two years a new array of mobile microinsurance services have popped up. Earlier this year CGAP identified 74 operators with live mobile microinsurance services, making up an increasingly diverse space that is active in more countries, offering a wider range of products, and using different business models.
Two of these services stand out, given their success, both with leading mobile network operators (MNOs). Tigo Kiiray in Senegal enrolled 13 percent of Tigo’s 3 million subscriber base during its first year and a half of its launch. Talkshawk Mohafiz by Telenor Pakistan managed to issue 400,000 insurance policies within its first two months of operations. What have these models done to gain access to this historically difficult market segment?
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