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.
Funeral insurance is not just insurance business as usual and requires a dedicated understanding of the dynamics driving funeral insurance markets. This applies to both insurers seeking to effectively target and distribute it, as well as for regulators seeking to find the right regulatory approach to it. Published by ILO
Microinsurance (or insurance in general) may not be affordable to all Swazis. Below a certain income threshold, non-market interventions such as public social safety nets can play the role of insurance. With this in mind, the market opportunity for microinsurance in Swaziland is estimated to stand at about 633,000 people.
These 2011 case studies on microinsurance innovation in Brazil forms part of a series on alternative, innovative microinsurance distribution models. These case studies are focused on retailer, utility and telecommunications distribution of microinsurance. The first case study covers the partnerships between Mapfre, an insurance company, and Casas Bahia and Vivo,
This 2010 presentation tackled the issue of informal insurance markets at the Financial Stability Institute’s meeting on microinsurance.
This 2011 case study on microinsurance innovation in Colombia forms part of a series of case studies on alternative, innovative microinsurance distribution models prepared for the ILO’s Microinsurance Innovation Facility. The case study covers three channels, namely the partnership between Codensa, an electricity utility company, and the insurance company Mapfre;
The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Microinsurance Innovation Facility (MIF) commissioned Cenfri to compare innovative distribution models from India, South Africa, Colombia and Brazil. The study was based on several case studies conducted and commissioned by Cenfri. The aim was to create a typology for innovative microinsurance distribution channels and extract
This 2010 study is concerned with the remittance of funds to Zimbabwe from South Africa and assesses the suitability of the 90-day casual worker’s permit issued to Zimbabweans as a tool for financial inclusion with a focus on the remittance of funds to Zimbabwe. Whilst the 90-day permit ceased to
This body of work aimed to map the landscape of microinsurance in Mozambique with the objective to identify the barriers to and opportunities for insurance market development and to make regulatory and market-related recommendations for future development. This document provides summaries of the regulatory and insurance industry analyses, the take-up
This study, undertaken by Saul Kerzner, was commissioned by Cenfri, on behalf of the FinMark Trust, to sketch a picture of the remittances landscape in the Johannesburg-Zimbabwe corridor. The aim was to build an understanding of the dynamics of remittances sent to Zimbabwe and the drivers of change and to
During the last ten years, South Africa has achieved remarkable progress in the area of financial inclusion for lower-income households in specifically the banking and, to a lesser degree, insurance markets. Limited progress has been made in expanding medical schemes (government’s chosen vehicle for private health financing) to more South
