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Accion’s Venture Lab Closes Initial Investments in Financial Inclusion Start-Ups
Accion announced the first five investments by Venture Lab, its $10 million seed capital initiative, which invests in start-up companies that help expand global financial inclusion. A pioneer and leader in bringing financial services to the underserved, Accion launched Venture Lab in April, 2012.
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- Press Release
- Categories
- Investing
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Avoiding the Generation Gap : Young people and financial access, going beyond mobile money
For many young people, owning a phone is aspirational and closely tied to their self-esteem. The surge of young people with phones or phone access and the emergence of low-cost mobile banking technology suggests that it may be timely to engage them in accessing digital financial services and building their financial capabilities.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Visualizing Financial Inclusion (and Shaping It)
With the year 2020 as the target, the Center for Financial Inclusion, along with Citi and Visa, are building a campaign leading up to the Financial Inclusion 2020 conference, set for Oct. 28-30 in London. Although the conference itself is invitation-only given the limited capacity and massive interest, this is a big tent effort.
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- Uncategorized
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Connected: Unleashing Ugandan Farmers’ Potential Through Mobile Phones
A powerful, new mobile platform designed for smallholder farmers that combines agriculture information and financial services to help them harvest bigger profits is going live in Uganda. Modeled on the cloud-based AgriLife, the new platform will be accessible via mobile phone and provide data collection and analysis about farmers’ production capability and history, while providing much-needed services to distant, rural farmers.
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- Agriculture, Technology
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Africa’s Microinsurance Maze: Early trial-and-error efforts could lead to coverage for 1 billion in 2013
Insurers, mobile-phone companies and behind-the-scenes administrators also involved have learned that mobile networks and microinsurance are potentially a great fit. The challenge for the future is getting people to pay.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Cases That Inspire Social Innovation
These success stories and the many others have helped fuel a growing interest in social entrepreneurship, particularly among students. I witnessed this strong interest first hand when I was a student at Harvard Business School (HBS). The Social Enterprise Club, which had started as a scrappy group with a handful of members, grew to be one of largest student clubs on campus, and the student-run Social Enterprise Conference attracted over 1,200 attendees each year.
- Categories
- Education
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Announcing the Winners of the NextBillion Case Writing Competition
How BTPN Bank in Indonesia continues to service low-income borrowers is the subject of the winning case in the NextBillion’s Case Writing Contest. The case, “BTPN: Banking for the Bottom of the Pyramid in Indonesia,” was written by a team from University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce in Charlottesville.
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- Agriculture, Health Care
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Striking a Match: Collaborating toward impactful research
In June 2012, the Global Financial Inclusion Initiative at IPA launched the Citi IPA Financial Capability Research Fund, a program supported by the Citi Foundation to incubate and rigorously study products and product-linked interventions to improve the financial capability of the poor. Our next matchmaking program will take place on May 29-30 in Lima, Peru.
- Categories
- Education
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