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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.

Diverse Paths: Finance for Women’s Nano and Micro Enterprises

Women-led nano and micro enterprises (WNMEs) are vital for providing livelihoods, boosting communities, and driving local economies. However, they face barriers like insufficient start-up capital and limited networking. This publication delves deeper the tailored solutions needed to support their growth based on in depth research in India, Kenya and Uganda.

Gender-Smart Market Mapping for Nano and Micro Enterprises: A Practical Guide

Segmentation and market sizing helps in allocating development efforts, guide investments, and identify policy gaps for women-led nano and micro enterprises (WNME). This technical guide offers steps to understand the WNME landscape, design targeted products, and foster inclusivity for growth.

Innovative Financing for Inclusive Credit Fintechs in Africa

Inclusive credit fintech can help address the US$4.9 trillion global credit gap for MSEs. However, early-stage fintechs face significant challenges in securing diverse funding sources. This focus note explores financing strategies for inclusive credit fintech in Africa, highlighting recent innovations and case studies. It also identifies knowledge gaps that hinder strategy design for international donors and impact investors eager to support digital innovations in MSE credit markets.

Empowering Small Giants: Inclusive Embedded Finance for Micro-retailers

Financial inclusion is becoming more feasible for many excluded and underserved micro-retailers, thanks to the emergence of new B2B e-commerce companies that are digitizing the final stage of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) supply chain. This report outlines various business models that incorporate last-mile retailers into digital ordering platforms, offering them convenience, transparency, and a wide range of products.

Leveraging Transactional Data for Micro and Small Enterprise Lending

The use of transactional data for credit underwriting can play a part in closing the estimated US$4.9 trillion global financing gap for micro and small enterprises. This case study examines the data and experience of two fintechs in India that use different sets of transactional data for credit scoring.

Building Value in Microfinance Through Digitization: A Role for Funders

This note highlights the importance of funders in supporting the digital transformation of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The focus is on business intelligence and credit renewal automation to increase the success rate of MFI digitization. Funders play a crucial role in ensuring that MFIs continue to serve the most excluded and underserved customers in the future.

Building Value in Microfinance Through Digitization: Lessons from Loan Automation Pilots

Digitization has brought both hope and frustration to the microfinance industry. To address this, we identified and tested five core principles for successful implementation. This focus note summarizes our experience, evaluates the validity of the five principles, and offers key lessons learned for other industry stakeholders to adopt and scale a similar approach.

The Promise of Fintech for Micro and Small Enterprises

Nearly 500 million micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are estimated to be operating around the world. Access to credit and other financial services is critical to the growth and sustainability of these businesses, and consequentially to the low-income and vulnerable populations which rely on MSEs for their livelihoods. Yet despite decades of efforts and some notable successes in expanding MSE finance, the credit gap remains an estimated 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars.

No Small Business: A Segmented Approach to Better Finance for Micro and Small Enterprises

This paper is based on primary research conducted with 383 MSEs in India, Kenya, and Peru – three diverse emerging markets with a vibrant MSE finance ecosystem that includes strong incumbent providers like microfinance institutions, cooperatives, and banks, as well as innovative new providers like fintechs.