<h1>Challenge</h1>
Financial inclusion means different things to different people. Today’s marketplace represents a wide array of providers with varying interests. Some focus on access to bank accounts, while others build electronic payments infrastructure, and still others develop credit services or insurance. With significant resources invested to expand financial services to low-income, first-time and underserved consumers, the importance of ensuring that newly included people actually benefit from the services cannot be underestimated. To be effective, the financial inclusion community needs alignment and direction about how to tackle a big challenge—too big for any one entity to solve.
<h1>Approach</h1>
CFI approached this challenge by building communities of support and action around a progressive agenda for global financial inclusion:
<h3>Agenda Setting</h3>
We articulated a vision for financial inclusion that includes service range, quality, affordability, convenience, consumer protection and empowerment. We understand what meaningful financial inclusion looks like, and our agenda reflects that.
<h3>Community Building</h3>
We know that constructing a financial inclusion community that serves, protects and empowers customers requires the combined efforts of many actors. We add value to the sector by bringing people together, building consensus and enhancing the industry’s collective knowledge and skills.
<h3>Delivering Insights</h3>
We investigate big, unanswered questions that can catalyze the industry to meet the financial needs of underserved people around the world.
<h1>Results</h1>

Setting an Agenda for Global Financial Inclusion

Citi Foundation

Credit Suisse

Mastercard Foundation

MetLife Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Consumer Protection

Impact Investing

Underserved Groups

Case Study

<h1>Why Financial Health Matters</h1>
Everyone strives to be financially healthy: to manage day-to-day finances, to weather financial shocks and to pursue longer term goals. Arguably, the core purpose of financial inclusion is to help people achieve financial health.

If the financial inclusion sector begins to measure the financial health of customers and considers ways to support financial health in their products and policies, it will have made a significant shift toward addressing what matters most – customer benefit.

From Idea Into Action on Global Financial Health

Dalberg Design Impact Group

Financial Health Network (formerly CFSI)

Financial Health

Over the course of 2016, CFI collaborated with project leads from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and Dalberg’s Design Impact Group (DIG) to evaluate hypotheses, conduct field research, convene thought-leaders, and test assumptions, all for the purpose of determining the validity of financial health as a core concept internationally. The teams worked to understand the necessary adaptations such a model would require across borders, as well as the opportunities and use cases for such a framework.

This report presents results of these efforts, finding that the core financial health framework resonates with consumers, practitioners, providers, and funders both in the U.S. and in the developing world.

This report is authored by Tanya Ladha, Kaitlin Asrow, and Sarah Rotman Parker of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), and Elisabeth Rhyne and Sonja Kelly of CFI.

Beyond Financial Inclusion: Financial Health as a Global Framework

India

Kenya

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Resilience

Report

Elisabeth Rhyne

Kaitlin  Asrow

Sarah Rotman Parker

Sonja Kelly

Tanya Ladha

India is a global leader in financial inclusion. For over a decade, Accion has worked with and learned from India’s innovators, investors, and policymakers to expand economic opportunity for its people and businesses.

The majority of Kenyans have mobile money accounts; their activity demonstrates digital financial services’ potential. Accion helps Kenyan innovators harness emerging technologies to create new financial services.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

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Setting an Agenda for Global Financial Inclusion

From Idea Into Action on Global Financial Health

Beyond Financial Inclusion: Financial Health as a Global Framework