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.
In the early 2000s, South Africa achieved remarkable progress in the area of financial inclusion for lower-income households, specifically in the banking and, to a lesser degree, insurance markets. Limited progress had been made in expanding medical schemes (government’s chosen vehicle for private health financing) to more South Africans. While
This 2009 study considers the opportunities and challenges for microinsurance development in Zambia. It develops a comprehensive understanding of the market on which strategies for the development of microinsurance in Zambia could be based. The analysis included a review of the demand-side, supply-side and regulatory dimensions of the microinsurance market
South Africa is faced with the challenge of extending insurance products to low-income individuals. At the time of the research the insurance sector had started to act upon this realisation by re-examining the insurance needs of low-income households. This change in focus was triggered by a number of factors, including
The need to provide for funerals is one of the key drivers of financial behaviour for many South Africans and has led to a relatively sophisticated and widely accessed informal financial sector. Informal savings groups play an important role in mitigating the risks of low-income households and are often complemented
