With an emphasis on inclusive financial integrity, Cenfri provides technical assistance, tools and skills building to policymakers, regulators, supervisors and compliance heads looking to apply risk-based and outcomes accountable approaches to money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation-financing risk strategies. Combining our understanding of relevant risks, familiarity with the FATF guidelines, knowledge of identity and identity-proofing capabilities and leveraging our competency in risk data analytics, we support financial service value chains undertake assessments from national level to the financial product level, thereby enabling the adoption of appropriate customer due diligence practices. Cenfri is committed to assisting countries to move off the grey list responsibly, shaping national risk assessment processes with empirical data and working with remittance services’ compliance managers to ensure that low-income households are not disproportionately affected in receiving low-value remittances. We are interested in mitigating the longer-term impact of illicit financial flows using digital technology (regtech, suptech and AI) to evaluate and monitor illicit flows and enhance inclusive financial integrity. We have worked with BankServ Africa, FSD Africa, GIZ, IFAD’s Financing Facility for Remittances, UNCDF and AFI on a range of financial integrity and identity projects. |
Will CBDC solve your financial inclusion woes or further exclude the vulnerable? Central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC) may alleviate financial exclusion barriers, but it comes with risks. Given some of the shortcomings of digital financial services in reaching financially excluded populations, central banks in developing and emerging markets have increasingly
Financial inclusion has evolved from a grass-root microfinance movement in the 1980s to a mainstream item on the development agenda. Its increasing prominence is attested, amongst others, by the formation of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), the recognition of financial inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals and
How financial inclusion must evolve to enable a COVID-19 recovery Sub-Saharan Africa has long been one of the financial inclusion sector’s top success stories. But according to David Ferrand, despite strong gains in inclusion across the region, the overall impact of that newfound financial access has been disappointing. Even before
How digitising customer due diligence can strengthen providers during COVID-19 and beyond For the last two decades, financial inclusion practitioners have been addressing the barriers that prevent adults from accessing and using financial services that can improve their livelihoods. One of the major barriers, originally uncovered by FinMark Trust in
DataHack4FI Season 3 report The DataHack for Financial Inclusion (DataHack4FI) innovation competition encourages collaboration and skills development to promote the use of data and data analytics to solve financial and economic inclusion challenges, thereby extending valuable financial services to the underserved. The initiative seeks to create communities of innovation by convening
In our previous article we took a first look at the different ways in which COVID-19 and its associated economic measures impact men and women in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. Using the nationally representative survey data from the COVID-19 Tracker, in this article we take a closer look at
The future of financial health measurement What is financial inclusion contributing in the face of COVID-19 and how do we measure it? The COVID-19 pandemic rages like a bushfire across the world – putting to test the development community’s long-held notion that financial inclusion would protect the poor against the
Financial health is a potentially powerful concept that is attracting interest around the world. Citizens, politicians and policymakers know that effectively managing one’s financial resources – being financially healthy – is central to the success of both individuals and broad populations. If financial health is to be a useful construct,
Financial inclusion is entering a new era The movement’s first era – which we’ll call “Financial Inclusion 1.0” – lasted from 2000 to 2019. During that time, the data tools employed to measure, track and guide financial inclusion efforts were effective in putting the sector firmly on the global development
A synthesis report on what we’ve learned As we set out to understand what our financial inclusion measurement quest would be, it became apparent that it matters what you try to measure. Financial inclusion targets (percentage of adults with a bank account, say) remain valid, but they don’t tell you
Policymakers, development organisations and sometimes even private sector players, often rely on financial inclusion data uncovered through consumer or ‘demand-side’ surveys. However, insight2impact has been exploring the analysis of financial transaction data to generate new insights on people’s financial behaviour. We have partnered with government institutions and commercial banks to
