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Author: e-MFP
2019 marks ten editions of the European Microfinance Award and to celebrate, e-MFP has decided to reach out to the previous winners, for a ‘where are they now?’ blog series, published throughout 2019, to look at what they have been doing with their initiative since they won, and how the winning of the Award has helped, and what plans they have in store. In 2016, the theme of the Award was "Microfinance & Access to Education". Kashf Foundation of Pakistan won for Kashf School Sarmaya, or Kashf Education Financial Program (KEFP), a holistically designed credit facility providing access to finance to Low Cost Private Schools as well as a capacity building and training for teachers and school owners, and a training of trainers on Financial Education for Youth. We’re delighted to catch up with them in the second of our interviews.

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Author: e-MFP
2019 marks ten editions of the European Microfinance Award and to celebrate, e-MFP has decided to reach out to the previous winners, for a ‘where are they now?’ blog series, published throughout 2019, to look at what they have been doing with their initiative since they won, and how the winning of the Award has helped, and what plans they have in store. In 2012, the theme of the Award was "Microfinance for Food Security", focusing on microfinance initiatives that contribute to improving food production and distribution conditions in developing countries. Alalay Sa Kaunlaran Inc. (ASKI) of The Philippines won for serving smallholder farmers and fostering effective market linkages and here we catch up with them in the first of our interviews.

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Author: e-MFP
It hardly needs saying that Climate Change represents the greatest issue we face today. Slowly – excruciatingly so – action is being taken at the macro level, reining in carbon emissions to attempt to keep global temperature increases within manageable levels. However, tacking Climate Change requires battles on many fronts, and not just on the mitigation side (minimising the actual Climate Change that takes place) but on the adaptation side too: how can we live in a world with a climate different to that we’ve had before? This is the challenge selected as the theme of the €100,000 European Microfinance Award 2019, which launches mid-March. Entitled “Strengthening Resilience to Climate Change”, it highlights the important role of the financial inclusion sector in increasing the resilience of low-income and financially excluded populations vulnerable to the effects of Climate Change.

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Author: e-MFP
The Luxembourg microfinance community has just added a new member – the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF) launched its European presence, headed by Jurgen Hammer in the House of Microfinance, Luxembourg. For us at e-MFP, this is a very welcome step! The Social Performance Task Force is a major force in the financial inclusion sector, having spent the past decade developing a range of standards and tools to measure the too-often overlooked second part of the double bottom line – standards and tools based on long-running consultations and input from practitioners, investors, and assessors.

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Author: Sam Mendelson
There were two topics that dominated debate at the recent European Microfinance Week (EMW) conference: the threats and opportunities brought about by the fintech revolution in inclusive finance, and the issue of financial inclusion for refugees and internally displaced persons. The event, organized by the European Microfinance Platform (e-MFP), provided the venue for a discussion of these issues that ranged from hopeful to surprisingly cautionary. EMW 2018 focused heavily on the spectre – or, depending on your perspective, the promise – of technology. The theme was approached from many angles, as panelists explored the opportunities and risks of digital financial services, Big Data and new fintech entrants into the sector. It was even the focus of the 2018 European Microfinance Award, Financial Inclusion through Technology. The opening plenary captured both sides of the issue, with a keynote speech from Graham Wright of MicroSave – who played the Cassandra role that suits him so well to implore the inclusive finance sector to pay attention to the risks that technology can pose to clients and institutions.

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Author: e-MFP
This is the second in a publication series of three interview pieces with the three finalists for the European Microfinance Award on "Financial Inclusion through Technology". ESAF Small Finance Bank (ESAF SFB) is an Indian MFI that is leveraging the rapid expansion of mobile phone and smartphone penetration in India to digitise a wide range of its lending processes, in particular customer onboarding, electronic applications, customer financial training, credit appraisal, in-field verification, mandatory customer identity and address verification using eKYC, as well as opening of accounts, cashless disbursement and paperless collections of loan repayments. ESAF’s field officers use Internet-connected tablets with biometric identity verification and its clients have QR-enabled Aadhaar Cards – with Government-issued 12-digit unique identify numbers based on biometric and demographic data. Their details are automatically transmitted for credit bureau verification, and clients are given ATM cards to withdraw money in convenient tranches from any ATM.

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Author: e-MFP
This is the first in a publication series of three interview pieces with the three finalists for the European Microfinance Award on "Financial Inclusion through Technology". Advans Côte d'Ivoire (Advans CI) is a NBFI in the Ivory Coast which offers payment, saving and credit services enabled by an Advans account linked to a MTN mobile money account. Advans CI has responded to traceability and safety issues faced by cooperatives paying cocoa farmers, as well as low school enrolment due to lack of regular cashflow among farmers, by offering its digital savings and payment solution, with wallet-to-bank and bank-to-wallet transfer services, enabling producers’ cooperatives to make digital payments to farmers for their crop revenue. Since 2017, Advans CI has been also providing small digital school loans, based on an algorithm reflecting farmers’ cashflows. Advans CI also successfully negotiated free MTN transfers between mobile wallets and Advans accounts for their farmer clients.

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Author: Daniel Rozas - Sam Mendelson
Since the dawn of the commercialization of microfinance nearly two decades ago, investment in microfinance has been made on a widely-accepted premise: investors will receive a ‘market rate’ financial return, while pursuing a socially-motivated strategy. This premise is so widespread that it has taken on the allure of all groupthink – becoming an accepted truism, without necessarily being true. The double-bottom line – the equal focus on financial and social return – can be deceptive. The dilemma is that while financial return has a clear target, social return is more nebulous. What social return is really being promised? Is serving a certain segment of clients enough? Do additional products need to be offered? What about financial education?

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Author: Rodolfo E. Quirós - Calmeadow
The central contribution of the microfinance revolution has been the creation of long-term client relationships. More so than tangible collateral, these relationships are the foundation of the incentives structures that govern the interactions between microfinance institutions (MFIs) and their clients – and that contribute to the fulfillment of contract obligations. From this perspective, genuine microfinance has been a kind of ‘relational banking’ for the poor. This interpretation is consistent with the growing emphasis on ‘client centricity’ in financial inclusion and it focuses on the value of the relationship, as measured by its cost and quality. The quality of inclusion, on the one hand, brings together what is valued in the transaction, such as proximity, timeliness, transparency, adequacy with respect to actual client requirements, variety, sufficient amount, reliability, sustainability, respect and dignified treatment - and others. Cost, on the other hand, refers not only to financial charges (interest and fees), but also to all the opportunity costs incurred by the clients.

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Author: Daniel Rozas
The publication of the 2017 Global Findex has generated much reflection on the state of financial inclusion – and plenty of analysis of the data, looking for the buried treasure of some new trend or pattern. This yields important insights. "The Financial Inclusion Hype vs. Reality report" by the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) is particularly worth reading for its in-depth and honest reflection of what Findex tells us. But when using Findex, there are important things to keep in mind. First, while the overall figures and trends are important, the numbers for any one country should be treated with caution. This is not because we mistrust the Findex team or their work. It’s simply the result of what Findex is – a set of surveys based on randomly selected (hopefully representative) population samples of more than 150,000 adults in over 140 economies. And surveys can – and often do – go wrong, particularly when they deal with difficult or personal subjects (like finance) or are conducted in countries undergoing political and economic turmoil. This reality forms the backdrop of our work at the Microfinance Index of Market Outreach and Saturation (MIMOSA) project, which since last year has been supported by a strategic partnership with e-MFP. A huge part of MIMOSA is collecting and comparing data – from credit bureaus, microfinance and banking associations, central banks, third-party surveys like Findex, and our own field surveys.

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