Our Vision
CGAP’s vision is a world where people living in poverty, especially women, can benefit from financial services to capture economic opportunities, access essential services, and build resilience – including in the context of climate change.
Many low-income people generate rich data trails that are not being fully leveraged in the design and delivery of financial services. CGAP's reading deck puts a spotlight on the specific data trails generated by digitally included yet poor people, the sources of these data trails, and variations of data trails across different segmentations.
Microfinance institutions that successfully generate value for their business and customers through digitization anchor these efforts in business intelligence. This Technical Note outlines an approach for improving business intelligence with interventions that require minimum or no investment in technology. CGAP also offers a customer dashboard library with detailed instructions for data teams and a tutorial video.
Open finance gives low-income consumers greater control of their personal information, helping make their data work for them, giving them access to more products at lower costs through multiple and easy-to-access channels, and allowing for remote consumer onboarding.
On this International Women's Day, we reflect on the state of women's digital and financial inclusion globally. At CGAP, we believe digital financial inclusion is a necessary condition for women to be digitally included and economically empowered.
Featured Topics
While a few platforms have experimented with offering financial services in partnership with fintechs and other financial services providers, this remains a largely unexplored area. CGAP is currently working with several platforms and their partners to pilot embedded financial solutions for platform workers.
Cash-in/cash-out agent networks are key to extending digital financial services and ultimately financial inclusion. Providers have struggled to extend these agent networks in rural areas, where sparse populations lead to lower transaction volumes and weaker financial incentives for businesses to serve as agents.
While many fintechs claim to advance financial inclusion, the link between specific innovations and financial inclusion is often assumed rather than proven. The reality is that it is hard for funders, investors and social entrepreneurs know which innovations matter for low-income, underserved customers.
