Howls of disbelief and denial greeted the assertion in Can Fintech Really Deliver On Its Promise For Financial Inclusion? that “fintech is irrelevant for most villagers because providers have made little effort to tailor interfaces or use-cases for the low-income market.” At the time of writing, the vast majority of fintech providers across the globe… Continue reading
Why does consumer protection matter? In November 2017, in Can Fintech Really Deliver On Its Promise For Financial Inclusion?, we noted, “It is quite clear that till date, the regulatory environment and consumer protection provisions remain too weak to secure the poor. Many have already lost money in basic money transfer transactions. Millions are negatively… Continue reading
MicroSave recently published its ‘State of the Agent Network, India 2017’ report based on our Agent Network Accelerator (ANA) Wave II research. We conducted the research in 2017, based on a nationally representative sample of 3,048 business correspondent agents. The 2017 India report proposes a significant shift from Wave I in 2015. The report… Continue reading
The Financial Institutions (Amendment) Act 2016, enabled agency banking in Uganda. What can financial institutions launching agency banking learn from existing data on the banking sector, from experience of mobile money, and from client expectations. The Financial Sector Deepening Programme (FSD) Uganda, commissioned MicroSave to find out. Teams from MicroSave conducted interviews and focus group… Continue reading
Typhoons are great engines of destruction. When a typhoon makes landfall it often produces a devastating storm surge that destroys everything in its path without mercy. The best defence against a typhoon is an accurate forecast that gives people time and means to get out of its way. It is therefore prudent to watch, watch… Continue reading
Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is now the world’s most successful financial inclusion scheme. This blog highlights the supply-side findings (specifically focused on Bank Mitrs (BMs) or bank agents) of the final round of MicroSave’s PMJDY assessment (Wave III) conducted in December 2015. The BM network is the backbone of PMJDY scheme. The… Continue reading
There is a worldwide movement towards the use of Big Data[1] across many industries, including financial services. Many financial institutions in the South now have economists reporting to the Board, and a select few, including Equity Bank and Kenya Commercial Bank, have Chief Information Officers. Data warehousing is a common terminology, even if evident in few… Continue reading
Let’s face it: we’ve all had problems with our bank or financial service provider; there have been times when we’ve sat across from a Customer Service Officer (CSO) and been unhappy about the answers we’ve been given. A few years ago, this very challenge led my colleagues and myself to think that there was a… Continue reading
This is the third blog in a three part series, which compares digital financial service offerings in Kenya. The first blog focused on mobile money services, the second one analysed digital credit and this one analyses digital deposits. Digital deposit accounts are a controversial topic in digital finance. Many analysts note that mobile money providers cannot offer interest on the balance… Continue reading
Microfinance has an image problem. It has had for a while now—instances of corruption, unfair interest rates, cover-ups, suicides due to coercive collection tactics—and the real victims are inevitably not the microfinance institutions (MFIs), but their clients: poor people caught in spiralling debt and little hope of legal recourse or financial relief. Many directly involved… Continue reading
