Research & Analysis

Financial Services as Infrastructure for Women’s Empowerment and Carbon Integrity

Women play a critical role in delivering carbon outcomes, yet they are often excluded from the benefits carbon projects create. This Focus Note argues that financial services are the infrastructure that enables women's empowerment while generating the evidence needed to verify gender co-benefits and strengthen carbon market integrity.

AI-Powered SupTech for Financial Inclusion: How Emerging Market Authorities Can Unlock Its Potential

AI-powered SupTech offers financial sector authorities in emerging markets and developing economies a timely opportunity to strengthen supervision, improve efficiency, and advance financial inclusion. This brief explores how authorities can adopt these tools responsibly through five priority recommendations: stronger legal foundations, realistic digital transformation, AI risk management, adaptive organizational culture, and deeper collaboration.

Unlocking Private Investment in Last-Mile Access via Shared Agent Networks: A Funder's Guide

Cash transfers in fragile contexts fail when recipients can't access their money. Shared agent networks are the critical link, but the economics don't work without funder support. This deck makes the case for shared agent networks as essential infrastructure, outlines how patient, collaborative investment can build last-mile financial access that sustains itself, and provides a financial modeling tool to help understand the trade-offs in funder support levels.

Stablecoins in Humanitarian Cash Transfers

Humanitarian cash transfers are vital to resilience, yet reaching those most in need remains a persistent challenge. This deck assesses how stablecoins can help development funders improve cross-border transfers and last-mile delivery, offering practical guidance for humanitarian organizations and social protection actors navigating the realities of humanitarian payment systems.

Contingent Lines of Credit (CLOC): A Liquidity Tool for Customer Climate Resilience

As climate shocks grow more frequent, financial service providers need tools that go beyond portfolio protection. Contingent Lines of Credit (CLOCs) pre-arrange loan terms and eligibility in calm times, and release funds rapidly to enable coping when a shock occurs. This reading deck explores how climate CLOCs work, what design choices matter, and how they can complement savings, insurance, and other resilience tools.

Opening the Black Box on the Impact of Inclusive Credit

Inclusive credit is one of the most celebrated and contested tools in development. This Focus Note reframes that debate. Rather than asking whether credit works, it asks: for which borrowers, through what product designs, and under what conditions does inclusive credit generate meaningful benefit rather than harm?

Innovation for Inclusion: A Roadmap for Inclusive Finance Policy to Navigate Rapid Technological Change

This paper presents a policy roadmap that outlines six key priorities for financial sector authorities, including leveling the playing field for diverse players, making payments systems fit for purpose, expanding open finance frameworks to open data, establishing an approach for inclusive AI, creating a framework for responsible use of tokenization, and building adaptive and innovation-ready ecosystems.

Advancing Competition for Financial Inclusion: Six Policy Considerations for Financial Sector Authorities

This Focus Note provides practical policy considerations for financial sector authorities to act on competition concerns using their existing mandates and regulatory toolkit. By applying a competition lens, authorities can promote competition in ways that advance financial inclusion while safeguarding stability, integrity, and consumer protection.

Solutions to Protect Consumers from Fraud in Digital Finance

This working paper presents a curated set of solutions for fraud (many of which are AI-powered), with more than 50 examples that have shown varying levels of success in protecting consumers from fraud in digital finance, across education, prevention, detection and disruption, and response and recovery.

Confronting the Climate and Health Nexus: Lessons from Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)

This case study is the third in CGAP's series on scaling inclusive insurance while preserving consumer value. Aimed at distribution networks — specifically grassroots networks — and insurers, it takes a deep dive into SEWA's innovative heat insurance product, developed with partners and grounded in direct insights into the needs and risks of its members.