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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.
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- Inclusive Fintech, Technology
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An Integrated Approach to Financial Inclusion: Welcoming NextBillion’s Newest Partner, BFA
Recognizing that the financial challenges of low-income people won’t be solved by access alone, BFA seeks out solutions that combine finance, user-centered design, data, policy and technology. That's why NextBillion is pleased to announce BFA as the sponsor of our new "Inclusive Fintech" Zone, which will host blog posts on the latest fintech trends, innovations and enterprises, along with two ongoing series exploring BFA's insights and analysis of financial inclusion-focused initiatives.
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- Inclusive Fintech, NextBillion Originals, Technology
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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.
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- Entrepreneurship, Inclusive Fintech
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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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- Energy, Inclusive Fintech, Investing
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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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- Energy, Inclusive Fintech
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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.
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- Inclusive Fintech, Technology
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Why Alternative Lending Struggles to Scale in Emerging Markets – And What Fintech Companies Can Do About It
Fintech models have proliferated in most developing countries, but alternative lending has struggled to gain scale. That's why FIBR, a project by consulting firm BFA in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, is bringing together fintechs and banks to use networks of small businesses – shops, clinics and even local schools – to deliver digital financial services to low-income customers.
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- Inclusive Fintech, Technology
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Machine Learning Meets Credit Scoring: How it Can Help Reduce Loan Delinquency Costs
Investment in predictive algorithms for credit scoring is a no-brainer for sophisticated digital financial service providers. Brick-and-mortar financial institutions that are just beginning to explore technology applications should follow suit, according to BFA, because credit scoring optimizes three business layers that improve the overall bottom line.
- Categories
- Inclusive Fintech
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