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> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of top picks features posts that spotlight green loans reducing energy poverty, savings and loans to improve the vulnerability of microbusinesses, and factors driving uptake of mobile insurance services.
In celebration of Earth Day, the Kiva Blog took the opportunity to share their work on green loans. These loans to individuals and small business owners help with the high upfront costs of clean energy technology. Globally, 1.3 billion people live in energy poverty – without access to modern energy services. Green loans support healthy and environmentally friendly energy switches, like from kerosene to solar lighting. Kerosene lighting produces black carbon or soot which is harmful to breath and also a greenhouse gas. Kiva has facilitated the funding of 39,000 green loans.
> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of Top Picks features posts highlighting trends in identification technology and mobile money, as well as a post on new mobile money research targeting user-centered services design.
Innovations in identification technology, namely biometric identification, are discussed in a new Center for Global Development Blog post. The author indicates that key identification areas worth following are remote authentication, the identification of children, standardization and interoperability, and privacy. The post is framed in the context of identification conferences and events, whose content reflects the diversity of identification technology applications, such as in financial services.
There were 219 mobile money services across 84 countries at the end of 2013, with the number of active accounts growing from 37 million in June 2012 to 60 million in June 2013. Those are a few of the main findings from GSMA’s new MMU State of the Industry Report on Mobile Financial Services for the Unbanked. A new MMU Blog post highlights the report and its key insights. Expanding on MMU State of the Industry reports of previous years, this year’s report covers the new areas of mobile insurance, mobile credit, and mobile savings services.
> Posted by Center Staff
With so much activity in the financial inclusion sphere these days, Top Picks had plenty of great blogs to consider sharing this week. Three posts stood out to us though, covering the areas of adolescent empowerment, new biometric identification technology research, and electronic government-to-person (G2P) payments.
- Adolescent women in Uganda are improving their economic situation and are living healthier lives, thanks to BRAC Uganda’s Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents ELA Program. A new post on the Kiva blog shares the results from an independent impact study revealing that the ELA program is attaining significant success. The program results in a 35 percent increase in likelihood that an adolescent girl would be engaged in an income-generating activity, a 13 percent increase in condom use among sexually active participants, and an 83 percent decrease in participants’ reports of having sex unwillingly. Over 40,000 women have been reached by the program. Kiva offers loans to program participants. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
Top Picks is back from a long hiatus with posts on incorporating behavioral economics into financial service design, the potential for academic research in financial inclusion efforts, and the importance of quality data.
- A new post on Next Billion from Jake Kendall of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offers insight into how behavioral economics can be used to improve money management. The post shares work from Ignacio Mas and Colin Meyer on building optimum mobile user-interfaces, includes a study on the effectiveness of basic finance heuristics over formal accounting training, and explores the potential of algorithms that interpret clients’ unique behaviors to better guide them towards financial goals. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of Top Picks features a post by Jessica Schicks on over-indebtedness and the consequences of repayment pressures, an important decision by the IMF to expand its focus, and a post that discusses the importance of good governance for social enterprises.
- Jessica Schicks recently wrote a post, “Over-Indebtedness in Microfinance – Who Should Bear the Risk?” for the CGAP Microfinance blog that discusses some of the risks associated with microcredit, specifically those related to over-indebtedness and repayment pressures. This post also reveals some of the very interesting findings from Schicks 2011 publication, Over-Indebtedness of Microborrowers in Ghana.
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