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Report: India’s government is yet to achieve its financial inclusion goal
“If we don’t catch up in accordance with the requirements of the society, a day won’t be very far off when we are faced with serious challenges of a large section of senior citizens who are completely devoid of any form of dependency itself,” Jaitley added at the release of the latest edition of Crisil inclusix report.
- Region
- South Asia
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Finance Responds to Climate Change: How ‘Recovery Lending’ Can Help Victims of Weather-Related Disasters
Natural disasters leave U.S. communities reeling – but those impacted generally have an insurance safety net. When climate-related catastrophes strike poorer populations, it is almost impossible to recover fully. In fact, every year natural disasters force 26 million people further into poverty. Stewart McCulloch of VisionFund International details a novel disaster insurance program that leverages big data climate models to support nearly 700,000 families with "recovery lending."
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Can The World’s Underbanked Leapfrog On To A New Blockchain Financial System?
Moeda is a new startup that allows investors to use the blockchain to support cooperatives in rural Brazil–in a different way than is possible in the current system.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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Is Mobile Money Killing Off the Group Microfinance Model (And Would That Be Such a Bad Thing)?
SAJIDA Foundation, an NGO and microfinance provider in Bangladesh, recently took the bold step of going cashless. But shifting to mobile money meant the end of group meetings – the locus of traditional microcredit for decades. The NGO was betting on clients embracing this new approach, but after the initial rollout, it noted some troubling downsides along with the expected benefits. Ashirul Amin of BFA explores the pros and cons SAJIDA has encountered in its cashless journey, and how it is responding with a hybrid method that blends old and new.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment
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What’s Ailing Sri Lanka’s Microfinance Industry – And Could Fintech Provide a Solution?
In Sri Lanka, microfinance interest rates can be as high as 72 percent – outpacing even loan sharks, whose rates average around 40 percent. This often traps clients in severe debt and perpetuates cycles of poverty – while MFIs themselves often enjoy high profits, low expenses and lack of competitive pressure. Suthaharan Perampalam and Mithula Guganeshan of Sparkwinn explore the potential of fintech (and better regulations) in changing this dynamic.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment
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Social enterprise Pollinate Energy has provided 20,000 urban poor families with affordable, green energy
In 2012, six young Australians — Jamie Chivers, Monique Alfris, Ben Merven, Katerina Kimmorley, Emma Colenbrander, and Alexie Seller — came together to see if they could find a way for children living in a slum in North Bengaluru, to have light to study.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
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How microcredit can help poor countries after natural disasters
BOTH, in different ways, worry about liquidity. And global warming may, indeed, be bringing meteorologists and financiers together. On January 18th, VisionFund, a microlending charity, and Global Parametrics, a venture that crunches climate and seismic data, launched what they billed as the “world’s largest non-governmental climate-insurance programme”. The scheme will offer microfinance to about 4m people across six countries in Asia and Africa affected by climate-change-related calamities.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Grameen America Celebrates 10 Years of Empowering Women through Microfinance as it Announces Foray into Impact Investing
Previously, Grameen America had been funded largely by traditional philanthropy and concessionary capital from foundations, charitable organizations, individual investors, and commercial lenders. The organization’s adoption of impact investing as an additional means of funding comes at a time when impact investing—defined by the Global Impact Investing Network as “investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return”—is on the rise.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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