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Making a Case for the Business Case: New Ways to Provide Sustainable Financial Services to Low-Income Communities
The high numbers of people who participate in informal savings groups is appealing to financial service providers – there are hundreds of thousands of active groups whose self-selected members save weekly for a year, and share their accumulated savings – but it's not easy to tap into this market commercially. BFA recommends using a business case modeler to help acquire low-income people as customers in a sustainable way.
- Categories
- Finance
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Register for SOCAP: Get a $250 Discount
SOCAP17 is still over a month away, but September 1 is the last chance to get tickets for under $1,000. Act now to get SOCAP17 tickets for $945 (a savings of $550 off full-price SOCAP tickets) using discount code MP_NextBillion applied to the Summer Special rate. Register soon!
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Financial Inclusion: Have We Been Approaching The Problem All Wrong?
“The lack of trust in financial institutions partly explains the tendency of households to avoid financial products and invest in physical assets such as gold instead,” the report added.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Fixing Financial Inclusion’s Gender Gap: Fast-Growing ‘Community of Practice’ Seeks Solutions
One billion women living in the poorest 40 percent of developing-country households remain outside the formal financial system. A persistent gender gap in developing countries in account ownership rates suggests that efforts at financial inclusion are not reaching women. In an effort to change that, CGAP recently launched the Women’s Financial Inclusion Community of Practice to bring together practitioners, funders and policymakers.
- Categories
- Finance
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Report: MFI investors have to wait a while to reap benefits of digitization in India
Investors generally tend to measure the success of their investment based on the growth of portfolio, profitability of the MFIs and consequently their return on investments.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- South Asia
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Why Startup Accelerators Won’t Create the Global Climate Technology Revolution
Accelerators may be a great way to launch the next Pokémon Go app or even Airbnb, but they're not as suited for climate startups in low- and middle-income countries. Jean-Louis Racine, leader of the infoDev Climate Technology Program at the World Bank Group, explores several reasons why accelerators are "at best an incomplete tool for building climate tech sectors."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Control vs Ease of Use: Low-Income Customers Weigh In on Financial Services
Automated 21st century financial tools, such as bill pay, are meant to make life easier. But for low-income customers and those with uneven cash flow, the need for control of their money can outweigh these benefits. Kristen Berman and Brad Swain of Duke University's Common Cents Lab try to reconcile this seeming contradiction.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Gates Foundation to Improve Enterprise Productivity in Tanzania
The co-founder of Microsoft landed in Dar es Salaam to support Tanzania’s financial inclusion agenda. The project has been launched by Gates and other joining leaders from government, financial service providers, mobile network operators and digital financial service providers.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa