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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.
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- Finance, Technology
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The Future of Microfinance is Mobile: FinTech Resolves Three Key Obstacles of Lending to the Unbanked
The microfinance industry has arrived at a new inflection point, according to Frederic Nze, CEO and founder of U.K.-based digital microlender Oakam. Those businesses that are slow to embrace the transformative power of smartphone technology will feel the full force of disruption over the next decade while access to fair, affordable retail financial services will flourish for consumers and small enterprises the world over.
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- Finance, Technology
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Responsible Finance: Moving Money from Mattresses to Mobiles
Technology has made it possible for lower-income people living in developing countries to access financial services that were previously beyond their reach. FINCA Impact Finance CEO Andrée Simon says her firm's new smartphone app, SimSim, which recently emerged from its pilot phase and already has 35,000 users, strikes a balance between the personal touch and modern fintech automation.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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To Fix the Gender Gap, Fix the Digital Divide
Most job growth will come from STEM fields, yet women make up only 12 percent of engineering students. That’s why MIT’s new Solve initiative launched a Women and Technology Challenge asking for technology-fueled solutions that enable women and girls’ full participation in the economy. Selected solutions will receive support from cross-sector leaders interested in investing in innovative social impact projects – the Solve challenge deadline is Aug. 1.
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- Education, Finance, Impact Assessment, Technology
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The Rise of a New Asset Class: Can ‘PAYGo Finance’ Connect Investors to Low-Income Customers?
Lendable has pioneered a marketplace lending platform that connects alternative lenders in East Africa with impact and institutional debt investors, to provide financing for leased assets like solar panels and motorcycles. According to BFA, providing these alternative lenders with structured debt financing could potentially give rise to a new asset class: PAYGo finance. If successful in raising funds from investors at scale, the Lendable approach could bring financing for low-income individuals full circle.
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How Flexible Financing, Solar Panels and Data Could Be Key to Financial Inclusion
With over 1 million units installed in the past four years, the PAYGo financing model is already unlocking significant growth for the off-grid solar industry. But the sector also faces formidable challenges. FIBR, a project by BFA in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, is exploring ways PAYGo solar can leverage data to make better point-of-sale decisions, customize product offerings, engage and retain agent networks, inform future follow-on products, and build linkages with other financial service providers.
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Inclusive Fintech: Four Lessons for Optimizing Customer and Tech Journeys
Catalyst Fund – a unique accelerator model that provides direct and tailored technical assistance to complement a startup’s skill sets – spent the past year working directly with early-stage fintech businesses in emerging markets. Here are some of the lessons they gathered, both on the tech side and the customer side. A key takeaway: Trust is slowly built but easily destroyed.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Financial Inclusion Takes the Next Step: An Interview with MetLife Foundation President Dennis White
As NextBillion launches our new Financial Health site under the sponsorship of MetLife Foundation, we touched base with its president and CEO, Dennis White. In this wide-ranging interview, White discusses the evolution of the financial inclusion movement, and the work the foundation is doing to advance it – including its grant-making and investing approach, its ongoing challenges, and what it has learned from both success and failure, among other issues.
- Categories
- Finance
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