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‘Stealthy’ Saving: Building on Payroll Credit to Automate Savings
Basic savings accounts are essential to helping people build assets, and to establishing their relationship with financial institutions. But customers often fail to open or use these accounts – even when they have the money and the intention of saving it. Acreimex, a savings & credit cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico, worked with BFA to find an innovative, "stealthy" way to introduce savings to its existing payroll loan customers. The results of their pilot program were intriguing.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Value, Not Volume: Four Ways Entrepreneurs Can Help Restore Trust in India’s Health Care Providers
India’s health care providers are facing a crisis of public distrust, and at its root is the way care is paid for. Most health care is delivered by the private sector, where providers earn based on the quantity of procedures, tests and consultations delivered – whether or not those services make patients healthier. Patients know that this profit motive can lead to excessive and costly care, but most have neither the knowledge nor confidence to question a provider’s judgment. Chintan Maru discusses ways to restore their trust.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health
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Impact Investing at a Turning Point: Read a Free Chapter of Morgan Simon’s New Book, ‘Real Impact’
Impact investing is at a turning point, says Morgan Simon, managing director of Candide Group and founding CEO of Toniic, in her new book "Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change." It's preparing for rapid scale, but risks falling short of its ideals and transformative potential. Simon discusses eight pitfalls facing the sector in the book's third chapter – which we’re delighted to offer, for free, to readers of our e-newsletter “NextBillion Notes.”
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Venture Capital is Broken – Here’s How to Fix It: A Q&A with Village Capital President Ross Baird
Venture capital investors are often backing the wrong ideas for the wrong reasons, hoping to strike it rich by dumping billions into frivolous apps that benefit only a wealthy sliver of the world’s population. Meanwhile, innovative solutions to pressing global challenges go underfunded. That's the thesis of Village Capital president Ross Baird, which he expresses in a new book. NextBillion editor Sonya Vann DeLoach discusses the book's message with Baird in this interview.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Water ATMs: How Technology is Improving Water Governance in Tanzania
The lack of accessible, potable water for many of the world's most remote communities is too often due to a water governance issue. But as Madison Lawson is at Catholic Relief Services points out, new enterprises are combining database management, water pumping and business models that can deliver fresh water to places most in need. She highlights one such "water ATM" system in Tanzania.
- Categories
- Environment, Social Enterprise, WASH
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Live from European Microfinance Week: Watch Recordings of Friday’s Two Plenary Sessions
NextBillion is covering European Microfinance Week as a media partner, and we're planning to live-stream two plenary sessions on Friday, Dec. 1, via Facebook Live. You can watch the broadcasts on our Facebook Page at 9:00 - 10:30 AM Luxembourg Time/3:00 - 4:30 AM EST, and at 3:30-4:30 PM Luxembourg Time/9:30-10:30 AM EST.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Welfare Schemes Don’t Work if Nobody Knows About Them: Fixing India’s Information Deficit
An information drought is causing millions of India's poor to miss out on billions of dollars in vital government assistance. Haqdarshak is a tech platform that addresses this massive problem. Using a combination of technology and a network of people, the social enterprise aims to transform the way people find out about, apply for and benefit from various welfare schemes.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Blended Finance Gets a $500 Million Boost: Convergence CEO Discusses Groundbreaking Partnership with IFC
US $2.5 trillion: That’s the estimated funding gap the world needs to close in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. To achieve this daunting goal, says Convergence CEO Joan Larrea, “We need to tap into new sources of capital, particularly from private investors” – a goal Convergence advances by connecting, educating and supporting investors to execute blended finance transactions. This approach recently got a half billion dollar shot in the arm; our interview with Larrea reveals how.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
