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What Can Donors Do to Ensure Responsible Digital Finance?

For digital finance to be a transformative tool, consumers must have greater confidence in the markets and in providers that deliver those services, writes USAID's Matt Homer.

New Funding Approaches Call for a New Way of Measuring Impact

Marcus Jenal presents guiding principles for changing the fact that monitoring frameworks are still predominantly designed for accountability towards funders rather than as a management and learning tool for the programs themselves.

Making Sense of Financial Inclusion Data Sources

Having a variety of data sources on financial inclusion is an asset. But depending on what data sources are used can lead to very different conclusions about financial inclusion.

Transparency In SME Investments: We’re Not There Yet

Despite evidence of financial and impact tracking, most DFIs do not disclose data on financial performance. Reporting on social impact is even harder to obtain. We are a long way from full transparency.

Six To-Dos Now for Responsible Investors

At the mid-year Social Investor Roundtable, the Sangam Group (CEOs of the 10 largest MIVs) and annual Development Finance Institutions (DFI) consultation on responsible finance agreed on a “to-do” list of six concrete actions for investors.

Back To The Future Of Performance Reporting On Financial Services

There are at least four lessons that branchless banking stakeholders can take from the MFI experience when it comes to reporting standards.

Expanding the Funding Horizon for Financial Access

There is broad recognition within the development community that donors have contributed significantly to building microfinance institutions that serve the poor around the world. But isn’t it time donors updated their investment portfolio to reflect new thinking and the new reality on the ground?

Banking Services Transforming A Town in the Amazon

What do the inhabitants of this small town of 15,000 people (30,000 including surrounding communities) in the Amazon need banking services for?

Marked Progress in the Transparency of Cross-Border Funding

Transparency on funding for microfinance made significant progress over the last decade. There are strong reasons to believe that transparency contributes to more effective and more responsible funding.

CGAP and Microfinance Investors: New Questions and Role

MIVs constitute the largest group of MIIs. MIV investment levels quadrupled between 2006 and 2008, and today, according to Symbiotics and MicroRate 2011 MIV surveys, more than 100 MIVs manage total assets of around US$7 billion.

Public Funders in Branchless Banking

Public funders have been instrumental in promoting and developing the microfinance industry; close to 70% of cross border public funding going into microfinance comes from public sources. Currently, the financial inclusion world is abuzz with excitement about branchless banking and the potential of services like M-PESA in Kenya to dramatically reduce costs and increase access to financial services. Yet branchless banking is a new delivery channel mainly implemented by private stakeholders such as for-profit mobile network operators or commercial banks.

Commercial Investment Landscape in Branchless Banking

This blog post summarizes a quick review of commercial investments in mobile financial services and branchless banking. We focused our review on equity deals between 2005 and 2010 involving mobile payment companies, agent companies, payment platforms and others providers that we knew were targeting the financially excluded in developing countries.

Over-Indebtedness: Roles and Responsibilities of All Actors

Still one of the keys to addressing over-indebtedness is analyzing the ability of the borrower to repay.