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Why Gyms Love January: Leveraging Behavioral Economics for Financial Health
People are famously irrational when it comes to financial matters. We can't seem to resist wasting money on things that we know aren't beneficial. Why do we make self-defeating financial decisions, and how can we be persuaded to change them? Evelyn Stark, financial inclusion lead at MetLife Foundation, discusses the ways financial service providers are leveraging behavioral science to help their clients spend less and save more, in the latest NextBillion podcast.
- Categories
- Finance
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‘Cross-sell Done Well’: How One Finance App Found a Balance Between Digital and Human Touch
Field officers at the Sajida Foundation, a microfinance provider in Bangladesh, knew their clients had rich financial lives, and that some held sizable savings balances to enable their goals. They also knew these clients could earn more by converting their savings to a term deposit account. Yet it was difficult for them to offer complex financial advice, or to answer questions around tiered interest rates and differentiated products. The Foundation worked with BFA to develop an Android-based app to address these issues – Ashirul Amin discusses the lessons learned.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Are Financial Returns Starting to Compete with Social Goals? An Impact Investor Assesses its Involvement in Off-Grid Solar
In the second of two posts, Oikocredit's Laura de Bresser assesses the social and environmental value of its off-grid solar investments: Is achieving financial returns starting to compete with social impact? Here's what the investment firm discovered about whether it's really helping people and the planet – and whether it should continue investing in this market.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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LAST CHANCE to Get a Free Chapter of Ross Baird’s New Book, ‘The Innovation Blind Spot’ – Oct. 31 Deadline
Village Capital president Ross Baird's first book, "The Innovation Blind Spot: Why We Back the Wrong Ideas―and What to Do About It" highlights a startling reality: While a handful of big companies are experiencing unprecedented success, entrepreneurial activity is near a 30-year low in the U.S. Meanwhile, investors are chasing the newest hit app, and ignoring grave and worsening challenges affecting billions of low-income people. We're giving away a free chapter from the book to subscribers of NextBillion Notes, our weekly e-newsletter, during the month of October.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Impact Investing and the Profitability Challenge in Off-Grid Solar: Oikocredit Joins the Debate
The debate around impact investing in off-grid solar has sparked surprising passion, and now Oikocredit joins the discussion with a two-post series. In this first post, Laura de Bresser tackles the question of how (and whether) off-grid solar companies can become operationally profitable and less dependent on equity and debt.
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- Energy, Investing, Social Enterprise
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The Protein Bottleneck: Are Insects the Solution to the High Cost of Livestock Feeds?
In 2012, 16.3 million tonnes of fish produced were used to make fish oil and fishmeal feed for animals. This threatens food security and is unsustainable. One solution to that problem, making the feed from Black Soldier Fly larvae, also has the potential to create thousands of jobs and a new agribusiness sector in Kenya, writes James Karuga.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Social Enterprise
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The Power of SMS: How Simple Texts Can Provide a Lifeline for Farmers
Last month, nearly 3,000 coconut farmers in Mindanao received a text from FarmerLink warning that conditions were ripe for infestation by two devastating insect pests, allowing them to take preventive action. That's just one way SMS messages are being used by FarmerLink, a rural advisory service formed by Grameen Foundation and other partners. The foundation's Gigi Gatti explains how the project, which also connects farmers with buyers and other services, is impacting smallholders 18 months after its launch.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Small Tweak, Big Impact: How a ‘Simple Innovation’ Convinced Farmers to Improve Agricultural Inputs
TechnoServe and the Gulu Agricultural Development Company (GADC), an agricultural company based in northern Uganda, partnered to see if a simple market innovation would spur farmers to use a hybrid maize seed and boost productivity. The results – as measured by a randomized control trial involving 1,000 farmers – show what is possible with even modest market nudges.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
