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.
Financial inclusion has in recent years found itself at a cross-road. Ambitious government targets, private sector investment and innovation, and steadfast support from the development community has greatly increased the number of individuals with financial services globally. The availability and uptake of these products have in many cases, however, failed
In my time as a demand-side researcher, I’ve often been labelled as a highly technical researcher. This identification of me as technical comes largely from my ease and comfort in working with data and the many kinds of software that you can use to understand it, but it also comes
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
Financial inclusion has in recent years found itself at a cross-road. Ambitious government targets, private sector investment and innovation, and steadfast support from the development community has greatly increased the number of individuals with financial services globally. The availability and uptake of these products have in many cases, however, failed
In my time as a demand-side researcher, I’ve often been labelled as a highly technical researcher. This identification of me as technical comes largely from my ease and comfort in working with data and the many kinds of software that you can use to understand it, but it also comes
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
