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Resilience for All: Why Inclusive Finance Can't Wait

The world faces urgent challenges as risks intensify and interconnect, amplifying vulnerabilities, especially for low-income populations and small and medium enterprises (MSEs). If left unaddressed, these vulnerabilities can create ripple effects with national, regional, and global consequences. This paper highlights the importance of inclusive finance as an indispensable component of resilience responses, and calls on everyone working on increasing resilience to leverage inclusive finance to enhance the reach, speed, and impact of their work.

G20 Policy Options for Financial Inclusion at the Last Mile

Despite gains in financial inclusion, several populations at the "last mile" remain excluded. This Note, prepared by CGAP, the World Bank, and the Better than Cash Alliance for GPFI, provides a framework for the necessary public infrastructure and regulatory enablers to reduce the barriers commonly faced by these last mile segments and emphasizes the need for more targeted policies and investments to address non-financial barriers.

From Crisis to Resilience: The Role of Inclusive Finance in Fragile Countries

Inclusive finance can bolster resilience and unlock opportunities for low-income people in fragile countries. CGAP identifies three levers of change for funders: leveraging humanitarian cash transfers, understanding informal financial services, and improving local market facilitation.

Climate Risk and Financial Inclusion: A Regulatory Perspective

Climate change risks may drive the financial sector away from serving the least profitable and most climate-exposed clients. This working paper outlines how inclusive green finance policies can help reduce these risks, creating a more stable and resilient real economy.

Emerging Trends in National Financial Inclusion Strategies that Support Women’s Entrepreneurship

Women entrepreneurs continue to face persistent gender-based barriers that impede their success – such as unequal access to financial accounts, constrained credit, and normative roles that keep women in the role of primary caregivers. Improved financial inclusion can help reduce some of these barriers. This WBL-CGAP Brief presents data collected by the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law (WBL) project on how National Financial Inclusion Strategies can spur policy and regulatory reforms in support of women’s entrepreneurship. 

Igniting SDG Progress Through Digital Financial Inclusion (2023 edition)

Building on the success of the first edition in 2018, the 2023 edition of Igniting SDG Progress Through Digital Financial Inclusion looks at evidence-based examples for the 13 global goals relevant to digital financial inclusion. This work is a collaboration between the Office of United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA Queen Máxima), Better Than Cash Alliance, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, CGAP and the World Bank. 

PAYGo PERFORM: Financial, Operational, and Portfolio Quality KPIs for the PAYGo solar industry

With the help of 600 colleagues from the PAYGO offgrid solar sector, a new set of 36 standard metrics covering portfolio quality, unit and firm-level economics, and company operational indicators are available today.

Testing the Waters: Digital Payments for Water and Sanitation

A growing number of water providers are experimenting with digital payments to reduce operational expenses and streamline service delivery. This paper extracts lessons learned from 25 water providers across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Digital Finance for the Real Economy: Introduction

This slide deck describes how digital financial services can contribute to international development across several sectors like energy, water, education and health.

Digital Finance for the Real Economy: Water

Digital financial services have enormous potential to achieve universal access to safe water and sanitation. This presentation is part of a series that synthesizes what we have learned and our insights into the power and challenges of digital finance.