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Press Release: MetLife Social Impact Investments Rise to $50 Billion
MetLife, Inc. (NYSE:MET) today announced its impact investment portfolio grew to $50 billion in 2017, an increase of 12 percent year-over-year from 2016 to 2017, and MetLife Foundation reached more than six million low-income individuals through the fourth year of its five year, $200 million dollar commitment to financial inclusion.
- Categories
- Investing
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Kenya telecoms operators reject money tax
The operators were reacting to Treasury secretary Henry Rotich’s announcement last Thursday that he intends to increase excise tax on mobile money transfers from 10 per cent to 12 per cent.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Vikram Akula’s inside story of SKS Microfinance will remain untold
‘Micro-Meltdown’, written by SKS Microfinance founder Vikram Akula, once the poster boy of Indian microfinance, is a gripping tale of what it takes to build a world-class financial institution and how to destroy it.
- Region
- South Asia
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Report: Postal Services Vital For Remittance Delivery In Africa
Postal services can play a pivotal role in delivering remittances, lowering the transfer costs and providing access to basic financial services in Africa, says a new report.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Using Findex Wisely: Understanding the Strengths and Weaknesses of the World’s Biggest Financial Inclusion Dataset
The Global Findex report is an essential piece of data for the financial inclusion sector, but its insights should nevertheless be treated with caution, says Daniel Rozas. Exploring some inexplicable findings in the recent Findex 2017 release, he breaks down the limits of survey-based data, and explains how Findex can be used in combination with other forms of data to get a more accurate picture of financial inclusion progress.
- Categories
- Finance
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Phone becomes a throw-in for mobile wallet app in South Africa
MyBucks, a company headquartered in Luxembourg that publicly trades in Frankfurt, was founded in 2011 to make microloans to small businesses.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The countries where women have more bank accounts than men
There are just six countries in the world where more women than men have bank accounts - Argentina, Georgia, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, and the Philippines.
- Categories
- Finance
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Is Financial Inclusion Stalling? The 2017 Findex Results Raise Several Red Flags
The Global Financial Inclusion Database (Findex) - one of the most authoritative yardsticks on the state of financial inclusion - finds that 69 percent of the world’s adults now have bank or mobile money accounts. But while that's an exciting headline, it's also misleading, as millions of those newly opened accounts are lying dormant. And that's just one reason why industry stakeholders have found the latest Findex data underwhelming. Elisabeth Rhyne and Sonja Kelly at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion unpack some of the troubling stats – and highlight a few bright spots.
- Categories
- Finance
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