CGAP Strategic Directions FY 2019–2023

This CGAP VI strategy articulates how CGAP’s work program is evolving in a period of rapid change. As a global think-tank and donor consortium, CGAP researches and experiments with an explicit view toward identifying solutions and extracting lessons that can be built to scale through its members and other partners, who ideally take the insights from the work and apply them in countries where they work. In selecting its work program, CGAP has identified a set of criteria for making trade-offs, prioritizing areas in which CGAP has high likelihood of having impact on the poor, while leveraging CGAP’s comparative advantage, influence model, and complementarity with CGAP’s donor members who can scale learning at the country level.

To continue to expand and deepen financial inclusion for the poor, CGAP has identified four interconnected priorities in its CGAP VI strategy: (i) creating customer value, (ii) emerging business models, (iii) enabling infrastructure, and (iv) next generation policy. Project activities grounded in these four priorities will allow CGAP and its partners to achieve the collective impact statement of “poor people are able to capture opportunities and build resilience.”

In operationalizing this strategy, CGAP will need to make trade-offs between competing priorities. CGAP will continue to work with and through its members to guide its agenda and implement the strategy. As a donor consortium with more than 30 development partner members, CGAP’s ability to deliver relies heavily on the financial and programmatic commitments of its members. With and through its members, CGAP is able to catalyze change, scale efforts, and make financial markets work better for low-income people. The proposed activities will therefore be shaped by the level of funding from and engagement with CGAP members. Finally, recognizing the risks inherent during a time of competing global priorities, CGAP is making efforts to mitigate these risks through the activities proposed and by exploring ways to expand the membership base.