Identifying Global Scale Solutions
The emergence of a digital economy, the globalization of data and information, rising inequality and increased migration flows are powerful global forces reshaping the world, creating new opportunities for people to move out of poverty, while also opening up new areas of risk. Increasingly world leaders recognize that financial inclusion, whereby everyone can access and use a financial account that contributes to their well-being, has an important role to play in enabling people to navigate this fast-changing world and is foundational to achieving many of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for ending poverty. As a global think tank, CGAP seeks to expand and deepen financial inclusion through its research and experiments with the goal of identifying solutions that others take to scale. We work in four interconnected areas.
Customers
Insights into the financial lives of poor people, particularly excluded segments, help financial service providers deliver products and services appropriate to the needs and aspirations of their customers, creating value for the customer. Read more >>
Market conduct supervisors (MCSs) charged with protecting consumers of financial products and services place great value on identifying, understanding, and tracking industry developments and market-level consumer risks and consumer behavior—the activities collectively known as market monitoring.
We are focused on the ways financial services can help poor people, especially women, to do three things: generate income, access essential services, and protect basic standards of living. We believe that it is through improving access, usage and outcomes of financial services that women can realize economic empowerment.
Business and Markets
The digital economy is connecting more low-income people to financial products and attracting a wider range of players to the financial services industry, spurring new ways of doing business and opening up new opportunities to achieve the SDGs. Read more >>
Millions of low-income households in emerging markets rely on micro and small enterprises (MSEs) to pursue economic opportunity and build resilience.
While a few platforms have experimented with offering financial services in partnership with fintechs and other financial services providers, this remains a largely unexplored area. CGAP is currently working with several platforms and their partners to pilot embedded financial solutions for platform workers.
In the context of global development, asset finance is about much more than enabling consumers to purchase expensive goods: it’s about helping people to afford the tools they need to improve their lives.
Cash-in/cash-out agent networks are key to extending digital financial services and ultimately financial inclusion. Providers have struggled to extend these agent networks in rural areas, where sparse populations lead to lower transaction volumes and weaker financial incentives for businesses to serve as agents.
While many fintechs claim to advance financial inclusion, the link between specific innovations and financial inclusion is often assumed rather than proven. The reality is that it is hard for funders, investors and social entrepreneurs know which innovations matter for low-income, underserved customers.
Can digital finance improve upon existing solutions and provide a better customer experience to make water, energy or other services that are essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) more widely available? These are some of the financial inclusion questions that CGAP is exploring.
Digital financial services providers will find here information to help them decide whether open APIs make sense for their business and, if so, how to implement an open API strategy.
CGAP's interoperability work seeks to help low-income users transact more easily across digital financial services networks. Exchanging payments is about much more than simply building the technical connections. Interoperability also requires effective governance, clear operating rules, and business agreements on how to support safe and reliable connections.
With vast amounts of revenue and data at stake, merchant payments are widely seen as one of the key battlegrounds in the struggle over the future of digital financial services (DFS).
Policy
Building responsible, inclusive financial systems requires a policy and regulatory environment that protects low-income customers, fosters innovation and has the flexibility to adapt in face of rapid changes brought about by digital technologies. Read more >>-
Market conduct supervisors (MCSs) charged with protecting consumers of financial products and services place great value on identifying, understanding, and tracking industry developments and market-level consumer risks and consumer behavior—the activities collectively known as market monitoring.
Donors and Investors
Understanding how the financial inclusion sector is evolving is challenging for donors and investors alike. What role can they play in an increasingly complex landscape? What market needs should they be focusing on? How should they go about it? Read more >>
Explore CGAP's guidance on how to apply a systemic approach in funders programming. A systemic approach aims to catalyze systemic change that is significant in scale and sustainable and that comes with built-in momentum for replication and adaption, beyond the timeframe of a development program.- The Financial Inclusion Navigator is a participatory review process for funders of financial inclusion, facilitated by CGAP as a neutral external party. It is designed to generate insights into how funder operations advance financial inclusion effectively in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the complex and fast-evolving markets in which they intervene.
