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Moving Past Microfinance: How India’s Small Finance Banks Aim to Take Financial Inclusion to the Next Level
The proliferation of microfinance in India has been a double-edged sword: On the one hand, MFIs have reached customers that most mainstream banks have overlooked. On the other, a lack of clear regulation and oversight has had devastating consequences for some borrowers. But regulators have responded with a new category of financial institution, the “small finance bank.” Andreas Nilsson and Nina Freudenberg of Sonanz explore the evolution of these institutions and whether a wider range of products could also mean deeper social impact.
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Press release: Wall Street Journal Financial Inclusion Challenge Returns for Fourth Year
The Challenge seeks entries from for-profit and nonprofit enterprises whose product or service is helping to improve the financial health of Americans, including their spending, borrowing, saving, investing and financial planning capabilities. These solutions must be innovative, scalable, sustainable and designed to have a positive social impact.
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- North America
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Microloans: Boon or bane for Cambodia’s rural poor?
Microfinance evokes both wariness and optimism here in the Cambodian countryside, where low incomes and savings mean farmers often borrow small sums at high interest rates to fertilize their plots.
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- Asia Pacific
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Development aid in Africa is flowing to the rich in urban areas and not the poor
In his paper published this month, Ryan C. Briggs, an assistant professor at the department of political science, shows that there are spatial differences in the degree to which aid reaches the poor in Africa. Briggs examined the data by dividing the African continent’s map—including North Africa and the islands—into 10,572 cells after which he aggregated aid projects, population, and poverty levels into each cell.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Most Influential Post Nominee: The UBI Debate: What We Know – and Don’t Know – About Universal Basic Income
Policymakers from Nairobi to Silicon Valley have lately been considering the same approach to reducing poverty: universal basic income (UBI). Evidence from ongoing randomized evaluations will be key to understanding the impact of UBI, and how this disruptive concept might fit into a broader portfolio of social policies. In the meantime, there is much we already know from impact evaluations of related interventions that can help make sense of the debate. Alison Fahey at J-PAL provides an overview.
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Most Influential Post Nominee: Yes, Microcredit Requires Subsidies … and That’s Great News
Recent research should finally put to rest the assertions that affordable microcredit aimed at poor households does not require subsidy: Serving poor customers well is always going to be expensive. On the plus side, the subsidies are quite small and, according to Timothy Ogden, those who perceive this as anything other than great news bought into the inflated expectations around microcredit.
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Ethical Investors Tightening Screws on Emerging-Market Debt Issuers
Prices on Vale and Samarco bonds plummeted by about a third after the disaster. Vale, along with mine co-owner BHP Billiton, is facing a multi-billion dollar claim. Events like that are increasingly spurring fund managers to look closer at environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks before investing in emerging markets, where polluting industries and accounting issues have often gone unpunished.
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- Latin America
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The/Nudge receives $250,000 grant from Rockefeller Foundation
The/Nudge Foundation, a Nandan Nilekani- backed non-profit focussed on sustainable poverty alleviation, has received a $250,000 grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, one of the largest and oldest names in global development philanthropy. The firm will use the grant to build organisational capacity, and expand its reach outside of Karnataka.
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- South Asia
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