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Impact Investment Performance: Tiptoeing Toward Transparency
The recent release of details about the performance of several impact investment portfolios and funds is another step toward answering the question more and more investors are asking: Is impact a boost -- or a bust -- in terms of financial returns?
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact investing, research
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Building the Business Case for Youth Financial Services: UNCDF, MasterCard Foundation provide lessons for financial services providers
Of the 1.2 billion youth in the world, 130 million are out of school, 45 percent live on less than US $2 a day, and 50 percent do not participate in the labor force. Is there a business case for creating financial products for them? YouthStart tested approaches for serving low-income young people in a sustainable manner, and their recent report aims to inform successful long- term strategy for financial service providers.
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- Education
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Leading health and philanthropic organizations outline plan to address global preterm birth burden
A call-to-action was issued to advance a comprehensive research agenda to address the global burden of preterm birth, which has become the leading cause of newborn deaths worldwide.
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- Education
- Tags
- philanthropy, research
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Targeting the Base of the Pyramid at Scale : How can large companies overcome internal barriers?
Over the past few months, we have worked with member representatives and experts toward dissecting one particular area: the internal barriers faced by large companies when they want to scale up inclusive business ventures. But we did not limit ourselves to highlighting problems; rather, we opted to couple each barrier to a set of proven solutions that leading companies in this space have adopted. The result is an issue brief titled Scaling up Inclusive Business – Solutions to overcome internal barriers.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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A data-driven perspective on Islamic finance
In an effort to add some empirical rigor to ongoing debates surrounding Islamic finance, a new working paper and Findex Note explore differences in the usage of formal financial services between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the usage of and preference for Sharia-compliant banking products.
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- Education
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Microinsurance: Ripe for Disruption
The microinsurance market grew to more than 500 million risks in 2011, from 78 million risks in 2006, and could be as large as 360 million people in Latin America alone, according to a report from Celent.
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- Education
- Tags
- research
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Expanding the Platform: What’s holding back Kenya’s mobile money ecosystem – and how to improve it
Kenya leads the world in mobile money, but the wildly successful M-Pesa platform is still used mainly for remittances. For the country to realize its mobile finance potential, it must develop a much broader range of payment use cases, says Jake Kendall. He challenged a team of researchers to identify the country’s mobile finance challenges and to come up with solutions - here’s what they found.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- mobile finance, research
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Beauty as Business: Research on women entrepreneurs in India
Women’s World Banking conducted market research in North and South India to support the expansion of an individual lending program. Their goal was to understand the financial needs of micro-entrepreneurs and identify how individual loans could help them reach their business goals. In this post, they discuss the findings from one particularly promising business sector: beauty parlors.
- Categories
- Education