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Winning the Low-Income Market: Assessing the State of Product Development in the Nigerian Financial Service Industry
Nigeria's financial inclusion goals have gone unmet, and the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed progress even further. Olayinka David-West and Ibukun Taiwo of the Sustainable and Inclusive Digital Financial Services initiative of the Lagos Business School share the results of their 2020 study on the state of the Nigerian market, exploring the product development practices of the country's financial service providers – and how they could be improved.
- Categories
- Finance
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ADF Supports Digital Financial Inclusion for African Women With $6.95 Million
The Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), supported by the French Development Agency (AFD) and hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB) has committed to financing digital financial inclusion in Africa with six grants totalling $ 6.95 million.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘The First Wealth is Health’: Exploring the European Microfinance Award 2021’s Focus on Inclusive Finance and Health Care
For the global poor, health is often the dividing line between the path to prosperity or a slide into destitution. Daniel Rozas and Sam Mendelson of e-MFP explain how precarious incomes and the absence of high-quality universal health care can push low-income households into a deeper cycle of poverty. As a response to the issue, the European Microfinance Award is seeking to highlight initiatives that facilitate access to quality and affordable health care with this year's €100,000 award, which focuses on the topic of "Inclusive Finance and Health Care."
- Categories
- Finance, Health Care
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Svasti Microfinance Raises $4.2 Million
Svasti Microfinance Private Limited (Svasti), an RBI Licensed MFI, has raised a total of INR 310 million from its existing investors Adar Poonawalla, Nordic Microfinance Initiative (NMI) and Rajiv Dadlani Group.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Achieving an Equitable COVID-19 Recovery Through Safe Housing: Why it’s Time for Financial Institutions to Step Up
Over 1.5 billion people around the world live in crowded housing with limited sanitary amenities — and during COVID-19, these households are at a particularly high risk of contracting or spreading the virus. Patrick McAllister explains how private-sector financial institutions can play a critical role in achieving equitable social and economic COVID-19 recovery by supporting home-related financing for low-income essential workers.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance
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Experian and FinScore to Raise Financial Inclusion in the Philippines via Alternative Credit Scoring
Experian, the world leader in information services, has partnered with FinScore, the pioneer in delivering telco data credit scoring to the unbanked and underbanked populations in the Philippines.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Better Loans for Better Homes: A New Assessment Tool Helps Microfinance Institutions Increase Their Housing Impact
Most housing in developing countries is self-built and incremental, and these homeowners frequently turn to microfinance institutions (MFIs) to finance it. But according to Naeem Razwani and Jitendra Balanirom of Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and Olivia Nielsen of Miyamoto International, this type of construction process can lead to severe quality and structural issues – while also increasing the lending risk for MFIs. They discuss how a new assessment tool can help these lenders understand and optimize the impact of their home loans to better meet the needs of this market.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment
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Women and Sustainable Finance: Fuel for the Engine of COVID Recovery
There is broad consensus on the need to intervene as a matter of urgency, in order to provide relief for women and underserved communities. However, governments and businesses have the opportunity to go one step beyond, and build the kind of resilience that will outlast any pandemic.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance
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