<p>Spotlighting the experiences of ABF Fellows and reflections from industry experts</p>


Spotlighting the experiences of Africa Board Fellowship Fellows and reflections from industry experts

Africa Board Fellowship Spotlight

<p>How do data collection and use affect vulnerable clients of financial service providers? This series tackles the latest developments in data protection and financial inclusion from regulatory and consumer protection standpoints.</p>
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Four blog posts from early 2020 about data protection and financial inclusion from regulatory and consumer protection standpoints.

Data Protection and Financial Inclusion: Why It Matters

De-risking and Financial Inclusion

Expert Exchange

Finance for All (Banana Skins)

A introduction to fundamental financial inclusion topics.

Financial Inclusion 101

Financial Inclusion 2020

<p>Started in 2015, Financial Inclusion Week is a week of global conversation on the most important steps needed to advance financial inclusion.</p>
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Started in 2015, Financial Inclusion Week is a week of global conversation on the most important steps needed to advance financial inclusion.

Financial Inclusion Week

<p>Financial Inclusion Week 2019 takes place October 21 &#8211; 25, 2019. This year, we&#8217;re taking a step back as a community to revisit the fundamental purpose of our work. <strong>&#8220;Financial Inclusion: For What?&#8221; is a call to action for our community to reexamine our goals and renew efforts to achieve them.</strong> We invite you to convene around this question to reexamine, redefine, and align our goals.</p>
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Podcast

Financial Inclusion: For What?

Events

About FIW

<p>Now in its 5th year, Financial Inclusion Week is an opportunity to strengthen the diverse community of players involved in building a more inclusive financial ecosystem.</p>
<p>The objectives of Financial Inclusion Week are:</p>
<ul>
<li>To bring the entire financial inclusion community together to explore issues of financial inclusion beyond access</li>
<li>To create leadership opportunities among diverse stakeholders</li>
<li>To create dialogue and community</li>
<li>To foster partnership and coordination within the financial industry</li>
</ul>


From the Blog

Quiz

Take the Quiz :) 

Get Involved

<h2>Why should we participate?</h2>
<p>Achieving financial inclusion is within our reach, but only if we work together to address the biggest gaps. When people come together to consider this question, they emerge with new insights, energy and focus. By serving as a FIW partner, you are playing a vital role as a leader in financial inclusion and helping to build a strong community, while focusing on the work of your organization.</p>
<h2>How do we participate?</h2>
<p>Financial Inclusion Week is easy to get involved with. Typically, organizations hold virtual or in-person events, write blogs or publish reports, engage their social media community—or all of the above. We also provide resources to help you <a href="http://financialinclusionweek.org/partner-toolkit">plan your participation in FIW</a>.</p>
<p>CFI will be coordinating and hosting activities during FIW and we invite the entire community to participate. We&#8217;ll publish and help to promote partners&#8217; activities as well. Keep an eye on the schedule on at <a href="http://financialinclusionweek.org/">financialinclusionweek.org</a> and<a href="http://eepurl.com/dDxzwE" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> sign up</a> to receive updates from the FIW team.</p>


Partners

CGAP's FinDev Gateway and Digital Frontiers Institute are media partners for Financial Inclusion Week 2019.

This year, we are taking a step back as a community to revisit the fundamental purpose of our work, and ask ourselves the question: What is financial inclusion for?

This year, we are taking a step back as a community to revisit the fundamental purpose of our work, and ask ourselves what is financial inclusion for?

Event

<h1>Financial Inclusion: For What?</h1>
This year, we are taking a step back as a community to revisit the fundamental purpose of our work.

As some organizations pursue financial inclusion as their ultimate goal, others are driving toward financial health or the <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300">UN Sustainable Development Goals</a>. Meanwhile, financial institutions and fintechs are aiming to profitably serve low-income markets.

In the face of these trends, we can’t help but ask: <strong>Financial Inclusion: For What</strong><b>?
</b>
<h3>Financial Inclusion: For What? is a call to action for our community <b>to reexamine our goals and renew efforts to achieve them</b>. During Financial Inclusion Week this year, October 21-25, 2019, we invite you to convene around this question to r<b>eexamine, redefine, and align our goals</b>.</h3>
<h2>Guiding Questions</h2>
<ul>
 	<li>What is the ultimate goal we are trying to achieve—financial health, sustainable development, equity, revenue generation? Or something else?</li>
 	<li>To what extent are our goals complementary or contradictory?</li>
 	<li>How do our efforts across the industry complement or counteract each other?</li>
 	<li>Do these goals align with what we aim to achieve as an industry?</li>
 	<li>How should we measure our success?</li>
</ul>

Financial Inclusion Week 2019

From Beth's Desk

<p>What do we have to get right to achieve meaningful financial inclusion?</p>


What do we have to get right to achieve meaningful financial inclusion?

Getting Inclusion Right

<p>Assessing the progress of financial inclusion</p>


Assessing the progress of financial inclusion

Global Findex

The Global Microscope 2019 assesses the enabling regulatory environment for financial inclusion in 55 countries. The 2019 edition features 11 new gender-focused indicators that measure financial inclusion for both women and men.

Report

Regulators play a significant role in catalyzing or impeding a country’s progress toward financial inclusion. By evaluating five domains of the regulatory environments in 55 countries (i.e., government and policy support, stability and integrity, products and outlets, consumer protection and infrastructure), the Global Microscope identifies each country’s current policies and regulations and notes which are likely to create an enabling environment for financial inclusion.

The 2019 Global Microscope features 11 new gender-focused indicators that measure financial inclusion for both women and men. These new indicators can help policymakers identify areas that could potentially improve women’s ability to access and use the financial tools they need to thrive.

The Global Microscope is produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit with policy guidance and financial support from leading organizations in the field, including CFI.
<h2>Major Findings</h2>
<ul>
 	<li>The enabling environment for financial inclusion has improved in the 55 countries covered in the Global Microscope 2019. Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay maintained the top rankings again this year. Likewise, the countries covered in the study’s regional analysis of Latin America and the Caribbean maintained the most favorable regulatory environments. These findings are at odds with access and usage data that show that Latin America and the Caribbean have recently fallen behind other regions. This points to the limitations that policies play in driving outcomes. They can contribute, but policies alone are insufficient in driving desired outcomes.</li>
 	<li>Practical impediments – such as limited access to identification, the Internet, and/or mobile phones – restrict women’s ability to use digital financial services.</li>
 	<li>Argentina, Costa Rica, Honduras, Russia, and other countries continue to adopt financial inclusion strategies and incorporate digital approaches to foster inclusion. In the past, national-level programs have led to the most progress over the short and long term.</li>
 	<li>Consumer protection and privacy laws are evolving to respond to the unique challenges that fintech presents, but few countries have updated their consumer protection regulations to account for the risks posed by digital players.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Calls to Action</h2>
<strong>Policymakers must ensure that both women and men are enabled to utilize and empowered benefit from greater financial inclusion.</strong> As the landscape for financial inclusion continues to evolve, and as financial service providers adopt new technologies and approaches, governments will need to implement policies to ensure that potential users develop the necessary capabilities and possess key enablers to access and use these products (such as national ID and mobile phones). This includes developing and implementing policies specifically designed to address gender disparities in access to these enablers.

<b>Governments must ensure their national strategies do not worsen the gender gap.</b> As financial inclusion policy shifts its focus towards the promotion of digital financial services, regulators and policymakers must address this digital gender gap or risk contributing to even greater disparities in access to financial services between women and men. Although nearly four-fifths of countries in the Microscope have strategies or initiatives to promote digital literacy, only one-fifth incorporate a gender approach into these programs.

Global Microscope 2019: The Enabling Environment for Financial Inclusion

Global Microscope

<p>From mobile payments to behavioral changes, innovation in financial inclusion takes many shapes and sizes.</p>


From mobile payments to behavioral changes, innovation in financial inclusion takes many shapes and sizes.

Innovation Spotlight

International Women's Day

<p>Keeping focus on who matters most in financial inclusion</p>


Keeping focus on who matters most in financial inclusion

Keeping Clients First

Mr. Provocative

Reality Check

Smart 100 Certifications

<p>The challenges facing financial inclusion due to the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented. How do we as a community respond to ensure vulnerable households, businesses and FSPs are resilient and recover?</p>


Eric Noggle

Financial inclusion is about to get a major stress test. 

Blog Post

As of March 19, the World Health Organization reported <a href="https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200316-sitrep-56-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=9fda7db2_6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">191,000 confirmed cases</a> of coronavirus and an estimated 7,800 deaths globally. Most of these cases are concentrated in China, Italy, South Korea, and Spain with cases in Western Europe and United States growing exponentially. In the meantime, the virus is continuing its unstoppable spread across the globe into markets with more poverty and less developed public health infrastructure to respond to the challenge.

So far, the number of reported cases in these countries is low. In Sub-Saharan Africa, there are less than 250 confirmed cases. However, most experts agree that the <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/ticking-time-bomb-scientists-worry-about-coronavirus-spread-africa">number of actual cases is much higher</a> or will be very soon. Several African nations have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/africa/coronavirus-africa-burkina-faso.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">taken early steps to block the virus’s advance</a>, but given the limited public health infrastructure, there’s a pervasive fear that the effects of the virus will be crippling when they hit. The need to flatten the curve in Africa is arguably more pronounced than in Western nations, where the capacity of hospital systems is lower (Kenya, for instance, <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/eamj/article/view/118829" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">only has 7,000 beds and 130 intensive care units</a> for a country of 50 million people) and there are almost <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/hivaids" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 million people living with HIV/AIDs</a> (in addition to other high-risk segments).

As we’re seeing in Europe and North America, the virus is likely to have profound economic impacts as the health effects of the virus multiply and the movement of goods and people is increasingly constrained in response. If the evidence on natural disasters is any indication, <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/22787/9781464806735.pdf?sequence=13&amp;isAllowed=y" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">low-income households will be disproportionally affected</a> by this shock.
<blockquote>Low-income households will likely be disproportionally affected by the coronavirus shock.</blockquote>
Despite being less contagious but much more deadly, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa likely provides our best corollary for understanding the economic havoc coronavirus could wreak in developing countries. In a report examining Ebola’s impact on poverty, the UNDG noted that <a href="https://www.undp.org/content/dam/rba/docs/Reports/ebola-west-africa.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">food insecurity and undernourishment increased dramatically</a> as a result of the “restriction of movements of goods and services, the quarantine of communities that are food baskets of the affected countries, the fear of trading with affected areas, [and] the closure of borders and international stigmatization.” Sound familiar? The report noted Ebola significantly altered forecasts for changes in poverty levels, flipping them on their heads to projected increases in poverty by as much as 17 percent.

Ebola challenged the microfinance sector in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone, <a href="https://www.findevgateway.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/sierra_leone_the_impact_of_ebola_crisis_on_the_microfinance_sector.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">one study of microentrepreneurs</a> suggested their revenues dropped by 35 percent and that their households had to cut consumption by just as much. MFIs lending to them decreased loan disbursements by 40 percent compared to the previous year, and portfolio at risk doubled in six months. <a href="http://www.globaldeliveryinitiative.org/sites/default/files/case-studies/rflessonslearned_10-25-17.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BRAC suspended operations</a> in these countries completely for seven months.

However, there were some bright spots. The <a href="https://btca-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/186/english_attachments/BTCA-Ebola-Case-Study.pdf?1502739794" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">digitization of payments to health care workers</a>, especially in rural areas, was a critical component in maintaining the public health infrastructure and <a href="https://centerforfinancialinclusion.org/learning-from-ebola-how-mobile-money-can-prevent-health-crises/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">providing care</a> to afflicted communities. And when BRAC restarted operations, there was a large demand for credit and repayment rates were high.

Coronavirus is not Ebola and this pandemic is going to present unique challenges to the financial sector. It will likely go on longer and infect and kill more people than Ebola by several orders of magnitude. Hundreds of millions of people will face restricted movement and with them, commerce will—and is already—slowing. What is the role of financial inclusion in such times? The financial inclusion community needs to do two things: get money to the people who need it as fast as we can, and keep as much money in their hands as possible.
<blockquote>The financial inclusion community needs to do two things: get money to the people who need it as fast as we can, and keep as much money in their hands as possible.</blockquote>
Getting money to people quickly is critical. To the degree that government and private institutions are able, they should keep lending and processing insurance payouts. Banks and agent networks need to maintain liquidity throughout their networks so households can cash out when they need to, and more importantly, we need to continue to promote digital transfers and payments across ecosystems to lessen the need for physical cash. Unconditional, litmus test-free cash transfers should be sent early and often.

It’s also important that we reduce demands on low-income households’ cash by delaying and/or reducing repayments and fees. This will ensure that the cash these households have available can focus on smoothing consumption and supporting health care costs in the near term and not servicing debt. On this latter point, I’ve heard of many lenders in our industry discussing how they can do just that. In Kenya, Safaricom and other <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/kenya-turns-to-its-mobile-money-dominance-to-stem-the-spread-of-covid-19/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mobile money providers are waving fees and raising limits</a> on mobile money transactions, which is a prudent measure (also because it removes cash as a medium for transporting the virus).

These are critical steps and financial service providers (FSPs) who are on the frontlines of serving clients will need support from governments, development finance institutions, investors, and donors. FSPs committed to getting money to low-income households and keeping it there need the same consideration.

We also need to begin preparing now for when restrictions on movement will ease and commerce starts functioning more normally to maintain the poverty-alleviation gains the globe has achieved. After Ebola, MSMEs were eager to borrow to jumpstart their livelihoods when the crisis was over. And more generally, the evidence shows that a real strength of financial services is in <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/687701493270597254/pdf/114634-WP-P162629-PUBLIC-ForumTheRoleofFinancialServicesinHumanitarianCrises.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">helping households be resilient in the aftermath of disasters and humanitarian crises</a>. Cash transfers, credit, insurance, and savings all have high degrees of efficacy in helping households restore their well-being. Low-income households with access to these tools tend to outperform households that do not on revenue generation, consumption, and health measures.

This is going to be a major stress test for financial inclusion, but we mustn’t delay: the time to act is now. It’s only a matter of days until these markets face this unprecedented economic, social, and public health crisis.

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Can Financial Inclusion Moderate Impacts of Coronavirus?

The challenges facing financial inclusion due to the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented. How do we as a community respond to ensure vulnerable households, businesses and FSPs are resilient and recover?

Series