Our Approach
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"We work to identify technologies that will best enable a wide range of potential providers to reach out to the poor regardless of their location or personal circumstances. That means mobile phones and other types of branchless banking, as well as the important role that information systems play for financial institutions." Gautam Ivatury, Team Leader, Technology
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Credit Scoring
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Alternative Data to Develop a Credit Score: The increasing use of electronic payment methods by lending institutions (e.g., mobile banking, ATMs, banking agents, etc.) increases the ability to track and exploit clients’ payment and transaction histories to predict payment capacity and creditworthiness. For clients without an existing credit history and without formal employment in developing countries, such data can be a valuable resource for lending institutions to better assess risk and help currently unbanked clients develop a formal credit history.
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With the right market conditions, mobile banking could reach large numbers of poor people who are outside the formal financial system, predicts a new report from CGAP, the global microfinance body. “The Early Experience with Branchless Banking” is based on the research and observations of CGAP’s work in technology and microfinance, and identifies a need for the following: payment systems that can work with many providers, rather than in a closed system; regulating transactions in a way that is proportionate; the creation of networks of third-party cash-handing agents (such as a post office or local merchant) that can work with many providers, rather than the closed networks that exist today in countries such as Brazil.
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News and Events
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CGAP Seminar - Banking on Mobiles: Why, How, for Whom?: (October 1, 2008) This is a half-day seminar that will explore questions such as how to design systems that use banking agents while safeguarding the interests of customers and agents and can mobile phone banking really fulfill its potential, and how do microfinance institutions participate.
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Banking Agents: Building and maintaining bank branches can be very expensive. At this CGAP lunchtime event in Washington DC on 22 July, Ignacio Mas talked about how networks of agents can be used to optimize access for poor clients.
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Mobile Phone Banking to Reach Rural Mongolia: As many as 300,000 Mongolians will be reached by a new mobile phone banking service to be launched by XacBank. The global microfinance body CGAP is supporting XacBank with technical assistance and funding.
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Microfinance Technology Survey Offers Chance to Win Free Consulting Services: Whether you're a small MFI or a big organization, your responses will help build a picture and create awareness of what's going on around information technology for the microfinance industry.
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CGAP Technology Blog
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CGAP's blog on mobile banking, technology and access to finance.
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Branchless Banking
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Branchless banking is the delivery of financial services outside conventional bank branches using information and communications technologies and nonbank retail agents, for example, over card-based networks or with mobile phones.
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Information Systems
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Strong information systems (IS) are the foundation of any financial institution. They help an institution make informed decisions, generate timely and accurate reports, lower costs, and improve customer convenience. Yet many microfinance institutions struggle with their IS resulting in inefficiencies which limit their ability to grow. The IS Program, a joint initiative of CGAP and the EU/ACP Microfinance Programme, helps MFIs think strategically about their use of technology, make informed technology decisions, improve their IS, and help pave the way for use of advanced technologies.
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