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> 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 Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director, CFI
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The CFI’s Financial Inclusion 2020 project team has been talking to the experts lately to get their views on the main recommendations that came out of our 2013 Roadmap to Inclusion process.
One of the high level recommendations was as follows:
Regulators need to craft regulation that allows technology-enabled business models to emerge, while balancing access and protection for base of the pyramid consumers.
We asked some of the experts to give their views on whether this recommendation is moving forward across the developing world. The general response was, “Not fast enough,” and so we probed to find out more about what is getting in the way.
Many of the players in financial inclusion envision a rich technology-enabled ecosystem in which customers can affordably use electronic means to make payments (inter-operably, of course) and to access savings, credit, and other financial services. In this vision, providers sometimes compete and sometimes partner to offer various services. Financial institutions, telecommunication companies, payment providers, governments, and others find themselves part of a complex network that seamlessly enables consumers to manage and enhance their financial lives.
> Posted by Caitlin Sanford, Bankable Frontier Associates
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As smart phones become much more affordable and digital solutions for the poor transition to app form, the burden is on new products to build trust and enable learning through intuitive interfaces designed particularly for this segment.
Marc Prensky coined the term digital immigrants to describe people who, as opposed to young digital natives, did not grow up immersed in technology from a young age. Mastering quickly changing technologies is a challenge for educated, fairly computer literate people. So, what is the experience like for digital immigrants who have learned all they know about technology from a basic Nokia phone?
With under 40 days to go, the 17th Microcredit Summit is rapidly approaching. CFI’s Josh Goldstein will be speaking during a plenary session focused on new innovations for microfinance and other financial inclusion interventions to more effectively reach the excluded. With the theme “Generation Next: Innovations in Microfinance,” this should be a great opportunity to explore what is on the horizon to achieve full financial inclusion. In this post, Josh discusses industry context surrounding the Summit, and what he hopes he and those in attendance will be able to take away from the event.
I am a sometime skeptic about the proliferation of microfinance conferences, but the upcoming Microcredit Summit in Merida, Mexico seems particularly important and timely. Personally, I am very excited about it. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should add that I will be a speaker, and of course piqued vanity can certainly lead to bias, but I don’t suspect this is the case here.)
> Posted by Juan Blanco, Associate, Financial Inclusion 2020, CFI
Mobile money services have spread like wildfire, making people less cash-reliant and able to easily carry out transactions like bill payments and money transfers. GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked program identified 14 mobile money sprinters – leaders of some of the fastest growing mobile deployments in the world. Among these, three case studies from mobile money services in Pakistan, Somaliland, and Zimbabwe have been published. The case studies highlight the reasons why these particular schemes have achieved significant customer bases and transactions volumes since their deployments.
Easypaisa (Pakistan). After only 11 months, Easypaisa registered 5 million transactions and by the end of 2012 it had 100 million transactions with a volume of $US 1.4 billion. Easypaisa was created in late 2009 by the MNO Telenor Pakistan and Tameer Bank, after Telenor acquired a 51 percent stake in Tameer. Telenor acknowledged that launching a mobile wallet product wouldn’t be the ideal way to set up Easypaisa since they only had a 22 percent market share and so the product wouldn’t encompass 40 million non-Telenor customers. Furthermore, regulations in the country called for very comprehensive Know-Your-Customer (KYC) procedures, creating the additional obstacles of increased registration cost and time.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
Rwanda has a lot to celebrate in terms of financial inclusion these days. Last week in Kigali the National Bank of Rwanda (NBR) hosted a conference in partnership with the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) commemorating their 50-year anniversary. At the event, titled Financial Inclusion for Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development, NBR Governor John Rwangombwa highlighted the country’s recent rise in access levels, from 48 to 72 percent between 2008 and 2012 across formal and informal providers. Rwanda now has the laudable goal of increasing this figure to 90 percent by 2020. To help it get there, on Friday the World Bank launched a $2.25 million program supporting key financial inclusion areas for the country.
Along with overall exclusion rates dropping from 52 to 28 percent over 2008 to 2012, formal services access increased from 21 to 42 percent during the same period, according to the 2012 FinScope Rwanda Survey. The new government goal of 90 percent access by 2020 is an extension of the country’s Maya Declaration Commitment of 80 percent access by 2017. Rwanda’s growth in formal access can be attributed to products offered by both banks and non-bank providers, like the country’s community savings and credit cooperatives known as Umurenge SACCOs. Over the past three years, Umurenge SACCOs have attracted over 1.6 million customers. Ninety percent of Rwandans live within a 5 km radius of one of the cooperatives. Countrywide, the number of MFIs, including Umurenge SACCOs, increased from 125 to 491 between 2008 and December 2013. Elsewhere in the sector, over the last three years, the number of banks increased from 10 to 14, the number of insurance companies increased from 9 to 13, and the number of pension providers increased from 41 to 56.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
Over 16 million mobile money customers in Tanzania are now connected to one another thanks to an interoperability agreement announced Wednesday between mobile network operators (MNOs) Tigo, Airtel, and Zantel. An important act of market cooperation on the continent, the inability (or high cost) for mobile money users to send money to those of different providers has caused industry-wide fragmenting, impeding the utility and uptake of mobile banking services.
The newly connected services make up three of Tanzania’s four leading MNOs, and their mobile money products – Tigo Pesa, Airtel Money, and EzyPesa – are three of the country’s four mobile banking options.
The fourth player in the market is Vodacom with its M-Pesa service, the sibling service to the runaway success of the same name in Kenya. Included in the press release announcing the agreement was an expression of support from the three MNOs for a recent statement made by Vodacom in favor of interoperability, with mention that an interoperability linkage to Vodacom would be welcomed.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Associate, CFI
M-Pesa, the mobile money service success story that began in Kenya in 2007 is continuing its march, this time into the surprising location of Romania, raising the questions, what will the product look like in this new European market and how will it fare. At the end of last month Vodafone, the operator behind the new service and one of Romania’s largest telcos, began operations using the country’s 300 Vodafone Romania stores, participating retail outlets, and authorized agents.
M-Pesa operates via SMS phone messaging and offers the ability to make deposits and send and receive payments to people and businesses – potentially an attractive prospect to the third of Romanians who don’t have access to formal banking services. Across the country there are about 7 million people who transact mainly in cash. The just-launched mobile service is estimated to be accessible to about 6 million people, and Vodafone plans to increase its in-country distribution points to a total of 2,000 by the end of the year. Vodafone has 8.3 million clients out of Romania’s 21.3 million population, the vast majority being active mobile phone users. The mobile money market in Romania is currently underdeveloped.
Of course, just because M-Pesa has achieved significant uptake elsewhere doesn’t mean that will happen here, too. Since the service first launched in Kenya, new M-Pesa outfits have been established in a number of other countries including Tanzania, Afghanistan, and South Africa. Within the past twelve months, the service also launched in Egypt, India, Lesotho, and Mozambique. Across these markets results have been mixed, with operators struggling to emulate the immense success achieved in Kenya.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
A few weeks ago Tanzania launched a National Financial Inclusion Framework, which includes the ambitious goal of expanding access to more than half the country’s population by 2016. As of 2012, 17 percent of Tanzanians had access to formal financial services accounts, compared to an average of 24 percent for all of Sub-Saharan Africa.
H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands in her role as UN Special Advocate on Inclusive Finance for Development joined the framework’s launch event, and emphasized how the effort builds on the country’s recent national commitments. At the G20 Leaders Summit in 2012, Tanzania was one of 17 countries that pledged to create a national financial inclusion strategy. It was also one of the first countries to make a Maya Declaration commitment.
Despite disappointing account ownership figures, the country has achieved progress in other areas. Between September 2012 and 2013, access to mobile money services increased from 63 to 90 percent nationally, with nearly 43 percent of the population actively using a mobile money service.
The national framework, alongside the goal of 50 percent account ownership by 2016, aims to achieve 50 percent regular usage, 25 percent of adults with at least two weeks’ worth of income in formal savings accounts, and 25 percent of adults with electronic personal financial records.
> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI
There’s no arguing that quality data is essential to achieving full financial inclusion. But of course if we want data to have an actual impact, it’s what we do with it that counts. The new Financial Services for the Poor (FSP) Interactive Map from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation incorporates financial inclusion data, country-specific supply-side data to be exact, into an interactive map with the aim of helping to identify gaps in access to financial services, to assist in designing policy, and to inform decision-making.
The tool uses GIS location data on financial access points – commercial banks, ATMs, microfinance institutions, mobile money agents, credit institutions, and post offices, among others – layered onto high resolution maps to create a visual representation of the financial services landscape for a given country. In addition to access points, the tool is able to display a country’s mobile coverage, urban areas, state lines, poorer areas, and population densities. The map is outfitted with a calculation tool that lets you generate numbers on financial services access, broken down in a number of ways including percentage of population covered, and urban or rural area. The countries currently available are Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania. Here’s a video of the tool in action.
The Power of Mapping Financial Services Data, a paper that describes the tool in greater detail and offers ideas on how it can be used to inform decision-making, was released last month. The paper lists the following points, broken down by stakeholder types, for how it might be used. Read the rest of this entry »
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