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. |
I designed a mobile survey today and really enjoyed it. You might be thinking: of course it is satisfying, it is easy. But that really isn’t the case. Mobile surveys, and in this case SMS mobile surveys, require a different approach, and when you’re trained in a more traditional, face-to-face
Why is it that 80 percent of bank account holders in Madagascar only use their accounts once a month or less? What makes the parents of a child requiring unforeseen medical treatment in the DRC choose to approach their mutualitée (a local form of informal mutual aid society) for a
The purpose of this note is to describe a process that can be used to design valid and reliable financial inclusion measuring instruments. It is often the case that important measurement dimensions are excluded from financial inclusion surveys. This could be due to an oversight on the part of the research team, lack of
The IFC handbook explains the potential that data and analytics present for financial inclusion and for FSP operations. This is the third handbook on digital financial services (DFS) produced and published by the Partnership for Financial Inclusion, a joint initiative of IFC and The MasterCard Foundation to expand microfinance and advance DFS in SubSaharan Africa.
Exploring the potential of alternative data for creating new markets. Financial service providers are increasingly adopting alternative data to understand and viably serve new segments of the market. Two main trends give rise to this: There is an increase in the amount of alternative data available, and analytical capabilities are improving to more accurately predict future financial behaviour, based
I bought myself a fitness band recently and I’ve found it quite useful in encouraging me to get off the couch. But, if I’m completely honest, I know I overstate how useful it actually is. When people ask me about it, they usually want to know how many steps I
In 2014, the Bank of Ghana (BOG) granted permission for reduced KYC requirements for a new Fidelity Bank product that targeted consumers at the bottom of the pyramid. The product, Smart Account, required only one form of national identity and no additional document to open the account, and so became
During my tenure at South Africa’s National Treasury, the discussions around financial inclusion often focused on seemingly straightforward questions: What is the state of financial inclusion in the country? What are the most critical areas requiring policy interventions? What targets are appropriate for what we want to achieve? How will
(Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series.) “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” – Marshall McLuhan In 2010, the leaders of the G20 launched the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) at the G20 Summit in Seoul. It was a watershed moment for financial inclusion, which
