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Study: Mobile money drives financial inclusion
Financial inclusion expanded 8 percentage points year-on-year in 2015, driven by growth in mobile money, according to a recent study. About 43 percent of Bangladeshis are financially included, says the study conducted by Washington-based research company InterMedia with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation based on statistics of 2015.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Unlocking Human Potential: How Psychometric Scoring Can Turbocharge Financial Inclusion
EFL Global aims to enable lending to underserved borrowers around the world. The firm pioneered psychometric credit scoring, a screening tool designed to identify traits key to successful entrepreneurship. In this email Q&A with NextBillion Senior Editor James Militzer, Jared Miller, CEO of EFL Global, talks about efforts by his company and others to “turbocharge” financial inclusion.
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- Uncategorized
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Online Micro Credit on the Rise in India
Paving the way for migration of a large section of the population dependent on unofficial credit transactions into the formal sphere, the demonetisation move by the central government has boosted the prospects of online credit platforms.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Don’t Just Color It Pink and Call It Financial Inclusion for Women
To close the financial inclusion gender gap, providers will have to do more than simply making cosmetic changes to their existing services. To that end, more than 100 financial regulators and policymakers recently gathered in Fiji and adopted a 10-point proposal focused on creating regulatory and operational environments conducive to bringing financial products and services to women – a possible game-changer for women’s financial inclusion.
- Categories
- Finance, Uncategorized
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Weekly Roundup: Romanticizing Castro, Bridge’s Troubled Waters and the Benefits of Cash
NB's Weekly Roundup makes the call on whether Cuba's high quality of health care justified Castro’s means of achieving it; ponders the future of a private education company under attack from public sector foes; helps debunk the assumption that poor people, when given cash, will squander it on cigarettes and alcohol; and brings up the possibility that data, as it relates to public health, is a business opportunity.
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- Education, Health Care, Technology
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Cash Still Trumps Mobile Payments and Bitcoin in Africa
According to the World Bank’s Global Financial Inclusion Index, Africa has the highest mobile money adoption rate in the world. Worldwide, only 2 percent of the population possesses a mobile money account; in Africa, 12 percent of the population uses mobile money.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Indonesia’s farmers to enjoy microloan boon next year
Indonesian farmers can expect to find a micro-credit program specifically designed to fulfill their financing needs next year. On Tuesday, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo called on his Cabinet to design a micro-credit program specifically designed for the agriculture sector to increase the amount of financing farmers could receive. He acknowledged that the current micro-credit program was too broad.
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- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
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Financial Inclusion Forum: The Technology Revolution
Technology was a recurring theme during the recent Financial Inclusion Forum. Eugene Amusin, chairman of the event, points out that while fintech is an enabler – it can decrease costs, providing new entrants with a competitive edge over incumbents who have legacy systems – there is a risk of new technology looking for problems to solve vs. creating technology to address identified obstacles.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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