The idea of a world that is financially included is compelling. But it will be almost impossible to achieve without a groundswell of collaboration and creativity. A host of actors need to cooperate to bring transparency to financial services, to track progress over time and to help target outreach. And we may not know in advance who needs to participate for the effort to truly succeed.
The impact of mobile banking in helping with microfinance initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa is highlighted in a new report on the world’s most unbanked region. Guy Daniels reports.
Globally Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the region with the largest portion of people excluded from formal financial services. Only 12 percent of adults have a bank account, and the situation is most dire in rural areas where the large majority of the 863 million people in Africa live.
Microfinance rating agency MicroRate and Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) have today co-published a study ‘The Tipping Point: Over-indebtedness and investment in microfinance’, which examines whether investments contributed to recent microfinance repayment crises, and whether measures of investment activity might
People who favor a commercial approach to microfinance and people who oppose interest rate caps have argued for years that competition would bring meaningful reductions in microcredit interest rates. Others have been skeptical about this prediction.
Geospatial mapping is being used to show the geographic distribution of banks, automated teller machines (ATMs) and banking agents in relation to low-income and other population groups, thus giving an indication of the accessibility of financial services to those groups.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued more banks licences to provide mobile money services, its Deputy Director, Domestic Payment Division, Emmanuel Obaigbona has said.
The development is in response to banks’ quest to play greater role in the cash-lite programme that started in Lagos on January 1.
Microfinance Focus, December 27, 2011: The joint UNCDF-UNDP project ‘Nepal Rastra Bank-Enhancing Access to Financial Services (NRB-EAFS) project has recently registered and uploaded information of all its partner microfinance institutions on MIX Market.
A New Year for microfinance is fast approaching, and if we’ve learned anything lately, it’s that you can’t be too prepared.
MIX Market, an important tool to research and analyze MFIs, is one place to begin that preparation. You may find the MIX useful for your year-in-review — and beyond.
Just a few years ago the idea of common indicators for the impact investing space was still abstract and vague. In 2010, the JP Morgan report on the state of the impact investing industry indicated that only 2 percent of impact investors used third party systems for social impact measurement; the vast majority applied proprietary systems.
