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Dollar by Dollar or Goat by Goat: How Financial Health Translates Across Oceans
The Center for Financial Services Innovation, in partnership with the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, explored how a U.S.-oriented financial health framework could translate into a developing world context. They discovered that the concept of financial health resonates just as strongly in lower-income countries as it does in the United States.
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The Hidden Cost of Digital Convenience
Technology has the potential to reduce costs and provide added financial benefits to poor clients, but a new paper discusses a downside to digitizing group microfinance transactions; namely, a reduction in group cohesion and sensitivity to transaction fees. Innovations for Poverty Action and others are partnering with product designers and microfinance groups to overcome these challenges.
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Common Cents Report: Behavioral Interventions Helping Americans Save More
The report details findings from seven completed behavioral intervention programs and ongoing research begun in 2016. The work is part of Common Cent Lab’s three-year effort to improve the financial well being for 1.8 million low-to-moderate income (LMI) households in America.
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Helping Microfinance Clients to Save: Are Incentives a Solution?
La Ceiba is a microfinance institution that serves low-income clients in rural Honduras, where the combination of distance, cost and knowledge gaps discourages clients from opening and maintaining a savings account. The MFI decided to leverage small incentives and special training to address those challenges; here's how they did it and what they learned along the way.
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The Surprising Reason Why Savings Boosts Income: New Research Reveals an Unexpected Benefit of Financial Inclusion
Make it easier to save, and people will save more. This seems straightforward and holds true for customers in rich and poor countries alike. Make it easier to save, and people will save more and earn more. This sounds a little less intuitive, especially if you posit that this increase in income will happen almost immediately. Yet this is exactly what researchers have found - and the reason why is surprising.
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The Problem of Mandatory Formalization in Financial Inclusion
An opened bank account in and of itself means very little, and a sitting balance in a bank account is literally a waste of money. What does have meaning is what accumulated savings let a consumer buy or borrow at a lower cost at the right time, without having to beg, borrow (at high cost) or steal. And when that asset grows in a meaningful way, then we have something to write home about: development and wealth accumulation in action.
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Almost Every Household in India Has a Bank Account, Says Labour Bureau
Almost every household in the country is a part of the banking system, mainly due to government’s financial inclusion plans, the latest Labour Bureau data showed.
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- South Asia
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A Demographic Time Bomb: The Urgent Need to Prepare Undocumented Hispanic Immigrants for Retirement
The United States is home to some 11.3 million undocumented immigrants, mostly Latin American. These immigrants are aging, and whether they stay in the U.S. or return to their home countries, many are woefully underprepared for the financial burdens of retirement. The consequences of ignoring their retirement savings needs are significant – but so are the opportunities to reach them with financial products.
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- Investing