Addressing Information Gaps: What Can Donors Do?

In a market, less information equals more risk, to both providers and consumers. Donors can play a role in closing information gaps and changing perceptions of risk. What types of information are relevant? How does information alter incentives?

Big Data for Good: How Impartial Institutions can Contribute

Call detail records (CDRs) are enormous datasets, easily comprised of a few billion data points. They hold all of the information on how, when, and where customers use their mobile phones. Why should international organizations be paying attention?

Data, Information and Government’s Feedback Loop

Governments collect data for many reasons. Making this data publicly accessible has the potential to encourage innovation.

What Information Do Customers Need to Make Informed Decisions?

We know more today than every before about how customers use financial services. But we still don’t know enough about what information customers access about products they are considering, and how this informs their financial decisions.

Why do Many Data Solutions Fail to Meet Expectations?

2015 saw a shift in the data and information solutions built to serve the microfinance industry. Many of these solutions failed to meet the expectations of their founders and were shut down or scaled back.

Crowdsourcing at Work: Mapping Financial Access in Uganda

Dynamic, rapidly changing agent networks translate to a need for sophisticate, real-time location data and analysis tools. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is initiating a pilot program in Uganda to crowdsource data on financial services available in Uganda.