Whether it is digital payments, resilience for MSMEs or financial integrity, much of our work is underpinned by the desire to create more inclusive financial systems and services. Cenfri has successfully implemented several multi-year financial inclusion programmes:
Making Access to Financial Services Possible or MAP (in partnership with UNCDF and FinMark Trust)
insight2impact or i2i (in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation)
Risk, Remittances and Integrity or RRI (with FSD Africa)
Remittance Access Initiative (with IFAD’s Financing Facility for Remittances)
Our view is that while financial inclusion targets (such as the percentage of adults with a bank account) are valid, they don’t tell you much when tracked in isolation. It is important to understand whether people use their financial services, and if so, whether this enables them to meet their needs. We have developed six financial inclusion measurement frameworks that outline this expanded understanding of financial inclusion.
If we move away from a one-dimensional view of financial inclusion as the percentage of adults with a formal bank account, we find that formal financial services are in fact having a limited impact on people’s lives (or in some cases leaving people worse off). Insights from the MAP Global Insights
Globally, the financial inclusion agenda has focused on migrating consumers, providers and governments to digital payment instruments, in a bid to reduce the cost of payments and to allow for the digitisation of other services for which payments are required (e.g. savings, credit and insurance). However, despite the increasing focus
This blog series seeks to generate a broader discussion on the data that is needed to close the gender gap in financial inclusion in ASEAN. A previous blog post argued that the headline data available on financial inclusion in the ASEAN region – the percentage of women with access to
The first GIS-focused community of practice knowledge-sharing session on 26 November 2015 focused on ways to promote maximum usage of geospatial data and financial access maps by the private sector. insight2impact (i2ifacility) was funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with Mastercard Foundation. The programme was established and driven by
Funeral parlours and burial societies deliver value to consumers by meeting essential functional needs, but also by meeting social and cultural needs. Funeral parlours have a powerful position in the funeral value chain. This exposes consumers to abuse. Such abuses are common and cut across different spheres, such as health
Underlying the global financial inclusion agenda is the assumption that providing access to and ownership of bank accounts will improve the lives of previously excluded adults and contribute to economic growth objectives. This assumption is reinforced by surveys such as Findex and FinScope, which monitor the progress of financial inclusion
The Finance Forward series aims to collect and present key findings on recent trends, driving forces, and relevant issues impacting upon the financial sector in Africa. The series intends to help leaders scan the larger, interlocking environments from which trends and themes emerge and interpret the contents based on the
The i2i data quality team supports Zambia’s Financial Sector Deepening Trust (FSD Zambia) in their efforts to make geospatial data accessible to financial inclusion stakeholders, particularly financial service providers. This process note serves to capture key learnings of the journey to date. Process notes will be updated periodically, with the aim of facilitating learning
The following is a brief from the insight2impact Data Quality team on their work with financial service providers (FSPs) on pioneering innovations in the application of GIS. It aims to provide a brief snapshot into the possibilities that financial access mapping can unlock. This document forms part of a forthcoming
Herman Smit interviews the new lead of insight2impact – Celina Lee.
