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Credit for the People, by the People: Three pathways to smarter financial inclusion
With the digitization of finance, lenders now have an unforgiving memory of poor people´s formal debt repayments, while knowing little else of any real significance about them. According to Ignacio Mas and David Porteous, this can become the basis for financial exclusion, denying even responsible borrowers access to credit. They propose some alternative pathways to financial inclusion in a new paper.
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PRESS RELEASE: Asian Development Bank Loans $200m to Yes Bank of India to Fund Women’s Self-Help Groups, Small Farmers
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), a multilateral development finance institution based in the Philippines, has recently approved a loan of up to USD 200 million to Yes Bank Limited, an Indian commercial bank based in Mumbai. The loan will be on-lent to “2.5 million rural, low income women”[1] who are members of self-help groups and “up to 37,000 small-scale farmers”[1] working in rural areas of the country. The loan agreement also includes a provision for USD 1 million to be used for technical assistance for capacity building, including financial literacy training and product development.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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- lending, microfinance
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Ujjivan Financial Services Clinches Single Largest Funding Deal in India’s Microfinance Sector
UK's Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC), private equity investors CX Partners, Newquest and a unit of Bajaj Group are leading a Rs 600-crore investment in Ujjivan Financial Services, clinching the single largest funding deal in India's microfinance sector, sources directly familiar with the matter said.
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- Investing
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- South Asia
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Community Foundations Embrace Impact Investing
A small, but growing, number of community foundations are starting to embrace impact investing in a big way.
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- impact investing, lending
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Better Loans for Better Housing: How Housing Microfinance and Strategic Value Chains Can Help Alleviate the Low-Income Housing Deficit
The majority of the world’s population lives in cities, and much of our future population growth is projected to occur in cities in the developing world. But in spite of the demand, the BoP housing market has been largely handicapped by informality and undeveloped channels for financing and technical assistance. Gary Carrier explores a number of market-based solutions.
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- Finance
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- housing, lending, microfinance
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A Visionary Approach to Financial Inclusion: Nachiket Mor discusses his groundbreaking plan for universal financial access in India – Part 1
The Nachiket Mor committee report has garnered global headlines by setting a lofty goal - bank accounts for all Indian adults by 2016 – and laying out an innovative, detailed vision of how to reach it. Mor discusses the much-debated report in part 1 of this Q&A.
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‘Aha Moments’ in the Business Model Process: FIELD at the Aspen Institute explores how to take pilot programs to products
If you work at a nonprofit, you probably know this story: You conduct a pilot program. The results are strong. The pilot funding ends. Then you scramble to find funding to keep the program going. How can you write a happy ending to this story? FIELD at the Aspen Institute explored this question during the last phase of their Asset Building through Credit Pilot. Joyce Klein and Luz Gomez discuss what they found.
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India’s New “Payment Banks” Expected to Spur Innovation
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday released the final guidelines for licensing of payments and small banks. These banks are intended to cover the unbanked and underbanked areas and increase banking penetration in the country, stated the circular. Let’s take a look at the changes that these banks are likely to bring in financial services.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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- lending, microfinance