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> Posted by Center Staff
Screenshot from VisionFund International’s webinar (click to watch)
This post is part of Financial Inclusion Week, a week of global conversation on advancing financial inclusion. This year’s theme is keeping clients first in a digital world. Throughout the week participants will share their thoughts in events and webinars, on social media, and through blog posts. Add your voice to the conversation using #FinclusionWeek.
On day three of Financial Inclusion Week 2016 we were excited to see conversations happen around the world, including in Rwanda, Bangladesh, and Australia. We offer a rundown of these events and the vibrant online conversation below.
The week is nearing a close but there are still plenty of upcoming events and ways to get involved. Be sure to share your thoughts on Twitter with #FinclusionWeek, join tomorrow’s webinar with Innovations for Poverty Action, or submit a client quote and photo to our collection of client insights.
What’s Happening
VisionFund International hosted a webinar (two webinars, in fact, to accommodate for different timezones) focused on the future of digital financial services. The webinar centered on how VisionFund is using technology to lend to smallholder farmers at the right level, and at the right time. During the webinar, Tom Allen and Justin McAuley, Director of Change and Programs and Director of Global Digital Architecture at VisionFund, highlighted a new application they developed which uses available geographic and market data to better extend their products to smallholder farmers and manage risk. You can watch the full webinar here.
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> Posted by Center Staff
Financial Inclusion Week is fast approaching! From October 17-21, 2016 partners all around the globe will hold conversations focused on advancing financial inclusion, and more specifically, this year’s theme: keeping clients first in a digital world. So far over 30 organizations have signed on to participate in the week, including BRAC, Innovations for Poverty Action, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Here is a rundown of the ways that you can get involved.
Hold a Conversation: We encourage organizations to gather internal or external stakeholders to discuss the theme in any conversation format that works for them. The link to register as a Financial Inclusion Week partner can be found here and you can check out a full list of this year’s events on the Financial Inclusion Week Website.
Talk to a Client: Given this year’s theme of keeping clients first, we are also doing a call for client visits. We encourage you to organize client visits for you and your staff, donors, or other partners – either in addition to or instead of hosting an event. This will provide an opportunity for you to hear directly from your clients on how they are engaging with digital financial services, and what they need from providers and support organizations.
> Posted by Isabel Whisson and Maria A. May, BRAC
Destructive and devastating, disasters threaten to rob communities of resources, households of livelihoods, and families of loved ones. Difficult to anticipate and inherently costly, is there hope of fostering resilience against them?
Certainly. This year at BRAC’s Frugal Innovation Forum, an annual congregation of development innovators, the conversation centered on “scaling resilience“. In responding to crises as diverse as Nepal’s earthquake, to Typhoon Haiyan, to the collapse of Rana Plaza, a common theme for solutions promoting resilience was to create systems in advance that enable immediate response and recovery.
Having access to financial services is key. According to Michael Kellogg of VisionFund International, “People know what they need following a disaster and are extraordinarily adaptable in identifying ways to meet those needs. Equipping them with money soon after the disaster enhances their capacity to quickly rebuild livelihoods and the economic recovery of the local market.”
> Posted by Center Staff
The latest edition of the Financial Inclusion 2020 News Feed, our weekly online magazine sharing the big news in banking the unbanked, is now available. Among the stories in this week’s edition are: Omidyar Network investing in eCurrency Mint, a company that has developed a new technology that enables central banks to issue digital fiat currency; FMO, the Dutch development bank, providing a five-year US$10 million loan to benefit VisionFund International’s MFIs in rural Africa; Tyler Wry, a professor of management at Wharton, discussing his research on how patriarchal power manifests itself in microfinance. Here are a few more details:
- Omidyar’s investment in eCurrency Mint was made through the firm’s Financial Inclusion Initiative. The digital fiat currency, called eCurrency, is issued by a central bank and has the same legal and monetary status as notes and coins – differentiating it from the various forms of private sector digital value available today.
- FMO’s investment in VisionFund International’s African MFI network will help support the growth of these institutions via debt capital. Additionally, FMO provided a US$275,000 capacity development grant to support VisionFund in creating an innovative approach to disaster resilient microfinance.
- In a video interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Wry discusses findings on gender and microfinance from his recent paper “Bringing Societal Institutions Back In: How Patriarchy Affects Social Outreach”. The baseline finding from the research is that when you have a high level of patriarchy in the state, in religion, in the professions, and in the family, it makes it harder for microfinance organizations to lend to them for a number of different reasons.
For more information on these and other stories, read the latest issue of the FI2020 News Feed here, and make sure to subscribe to the weekly online magazine by entering your email address in the right-hand menu 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 Jeffrey Riecke at .
> Posted by Anne Hastings, Manager, Microfinance CEO Working Group
The CEOs of eight leading global microfinance networks – Accion, FINCA, Freedom from Hunger, Grameen Foundation, Opportunity International, Pro Mujer, VisionFund International, and Women’s World Banking – made six significant commitments at the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s Partnerships Against Poverty Summit last week in Manila. These eight CEOs make up the Microfinance CEO Working Group. Together they represent more than 250 retail microfinance institutions in 70 countries globally and provide financial and often non-financial services to more than 40 million families.
Here are the commitments:
1. Client Protection: Encourage all affiliates to progress toward Smart Campaign certification and be on a pathway toward certification by the end of 2014.
2. Pricing Transparency: Motivate our affiliates to commit to pricing transparency and integrity by agreeing to publish their pricing data using standard methodologies, such as those developed by MicroFinance Transparency, in order to allow investors and clients to make informed decisions.
3. Social Performance: Promote the Social Performance Task Force’s Universal Standards for Social Performance Management among our affiliates and commit to supporting their compliance.
> Posted by Mary Ellen Iskenderian and Rupert Scofield, Co-Chairs of the Microfinance CEO Working Group
As co-chairs of the Microfinance CEO Working Group, we are pleased to share with you a joint statement from the Working Group in support of the recently announced Smart Campaign Client Protection Certification Program. Certification will offer public recognition for institutions that meet adequate standards of care in appropriately protecting microfinance clients, as verified by an independent evaluation. It marks a clear step forward in ensuring the microfinance industry puts the treatment of its clients first.
Since we began meeting in early 2011, many of the Working Group’s discussions have focused on the fundamental question of what the microfinance industry requires to flourish in the future. We believe that client protection is central to the answer. It is common sense – and good business practice – that a fair and respectful relationship with clients is required to develop trust, reduce risk, and serve them appropriately. As leaders of FINCA and Women’s World Banking, we are especially concerned with the fair treatment of women clients, the traditional backbone of the microfinance industry, who are often more vulnerable to exploitation.
> Posted by Mary Jo Kochendorfer, Manager, Social Performance Management Center, Grameen Foundation
Mary Jo Kochendorfer, on right, at AFMIN Annual Conference in Uganda.
This post by Mary Jo Kochendorfer was originally published on the Progress out of Poverty blog. Progress out of Poverty is an initiative of the Grameen Foundation that assists microfinance institutions and other organizations measure and track the poverty levels of groups and individuals, and in turn better manage their programs.
This past summer, the microfinance industry recently celebrated a milestone when the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF) released the Universal Standards of Social Performance Management (USSPM) after a worldwide consensus-building effort. After much work and collaboration, the microfinance industry, by way of the SPTF, came together and put forth standards which outline the best practices for monitoring and managing social performance. The SPTF defines social performance as “the effective translation of an institution’s social mission into practice in line with accepted social values.” Following the SPTF annual meeting back in June, regional microfinance networks have also prioritized social performance in their agendas.
Last month, the Africa Microfinance Network (AFMIN) hosted its annual conference in Kampala, Uganda to discuss “the State-of-the-Practice of Social Performance Management in Africa.” While there, I participated in a panel on Poverty Measurement Tools along with colleagues from Caurie-Microfinance, VisionFund International and CGAP.
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