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Aug 2015
Fitch: Mexican Pawnshops, an Evolving Industry
August, 31 2015
Mexico - Gold prices and exchange rate volatility, amid increasing regulation and competition from microfinance companies, are pushing the consolidation of the pawnshop sector in Mexico, according to a new Fitch Ratings dashboard report ...
Financial Inclusion Panel Highlights Expanding Services for the World’s Unbanked
August, 31 2015
Global - The proliferation of financial services has many benefits, but it will also create policy challenges if regulations do not keep up with financial innovation ...
FMO Arranges USD15 Million Loan Syndication to FINCA Bank Kyrgyzstan
August, 28 2015
Kyrgyzstan - Today, FINCA Bank Kyrgyzstan announced that the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) has reached agreement on a USD 15 million local currency syndicated loan facility for on-lending to micro and small businesses in Kyrgyzstan. ...
Cambodian Banks: Still Powering Ahead
August, 28 2015
Cambodia - Acleda Bank, often described as Cambodia’s most successful business, leads the sector’s 35-odd commercial banks on both deposits and loans, ahead of powerful foreign banks such as ANZ and local-foreign joint ventures. ...
Deutsche Bank Adds Funding to EFSE Micro Finance Fund
August, 27 2015
Germany - The bank, which also acted as underwriter for the transactions, managed to raise a total of EUR 90 million from private institutional investors for the fund in the form of two and three-year tranches. ...
Microfinance Leader FINCA Azerbaijan Receives Smart Certification for Client Protection
August, 27 2015
Azerbaijan - Today FINCA Azerbaijan announced it has received Client Protection Certification by the Smart Campaign. This global initiative certifies the adoption of high ethical standards in the treatment of clients in the microfinance industry ...
Jordan: SME Forum Highlights Vulnerability and Resilience of MENA Micro-businesses
August, 27 2015
Jordan - Developments in the region, especially the drop in oil prices, require a "genuine" stance to empower small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), experts said Wednesday ...
10 Challenges That Could Make or Break India’s Payments Banks
August, 26 2015
India - In the year since it was launched, India’s national financial inclusion drive has generated plenty of headlines – and even scored a Guinness World Record. But last week’s announcement from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could prove to be one if its most consequential moves ...
Nigeria: Fortis MFB Gets National License From CBN
August, 26 2015
Nigeria - Fortis Microfinance Bank Plc, the largest microfinance bank in Abuja and the North Central Region of Nigeria, has been granted a national microfinance banking license by the Central Bank of Nigeria ...
Rwanda's Gender Gap: Banks Must Stop Failing Female Entrepreneurs
August, 25 2015
Rwanda - Supporting Rwandan women to access formal financial services and establish and grow businesses will ultimately benefit the entire nation, since research shows that women plough the majority of their income back into their families and communities. ...
D. Sejfovic, General Manager, LIDER MicroCredit Foundation: Improving Microfinance Regulations in Bosnia
August, 24 2015
Bosnia and Herzegovina - To promote a truly inclusive financial sector, the Federation of Bosnia must reform its laws. To do this, the local microfinance sector needs to work together – Microcredit Foundations, Microcredit Companies, regulators, local ministries, funders – to find a solution that will help advance the sector and the institutions already serving the economically disadvantaged. ...
India: FIS Opens Financial Inclusion Lab in India to Drive Banking Access
August, 24 2015
India - FIS™ (NYSE: FIS), a global leader in banking and payments technology as well as consulting and outsourcing solutions, announced the launch of India’s first financial inclusion lab in Bengaluru. The lab is aimed at developing innovative ways to extend banking access to India’s millions of underbanked citizens. ...
India: Bandhan Bank Garners Rs80 Crore Deposits on First Day
August, 24 2015
India - Bandhan, the first microfinance institution to morph into a bank, began operations with 1.43 crore accounts and a Rs.10,500-crore loan book. ...
ORIX Announces Additional Investment in the Largest Cambodian Bank Acleda
August, 24 2015
Cambodia - ORIX is scheduled to additionally acquire 6.25% of ACLEDA's shares in around September, 2015, having received approval for the share acquisition from the National Bank of Cambodia. ...
World’s Poor Start to Bank on a Better Future
August, 23 2015
Global - Campaigners for years have been battling to get the world’s poor better access to banking, arguing that something as simple as setting up a bank account and, better yet, providing credit can be the most effective tools to help people rise out of poverty. ...
India: Bandhan Begins its Journey with 501 Branches
August, 23 2015
India - Bandhan Bank started its journey today, 14 years after Chandra Shekhar Ghosh started Bandhan micro finance institution (MFI) with three staff members here. ...
M. Glynn, The Independent: Nicaragua Teaches a Lesson in the Power of Micro Loans
August, 22 2015
Nicaragua - Driving through the streets of Managua in August, the realities of life for the citizens of the poorest country in Central America are starkly apparent ...
C. Connolly, Contributor, Mondato LLC: Will West Africa Be the New East Africa in Mobile Money?
August, 21 2015
West Africa - From the shining mobile money success story of Ivory Coast to the e-wallet desert of Togo, the members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (better known by its French acronym, UEMOA) serve as a useful reminder that a relatively enabling regulatory environment is a necessary but not adequate condition for the growth of mobile financial and other mobile services in developing markets ...
S. Staschen, CGAP: Payment Innovations in Turkey - Not (Yet) Reaching the Unbanked
August, 21 2015
Turkey - Moving forward, payments innovations and in particular the emergence of directly licensed electronic money institutions will be a trend to watch in Turkey. What financial inclusion progress will we see in the next Global Findex? Any changes in the digital finance space could be a powerful determinant ...
Microfinance Giant Finca Plans London Expansion to Tap Capital’s Cash
August, 21 2015
Global - Finca, the microfinance giant providing business loans as small as £20 to the world’s poorest people, is expanding its London operations and seeking a high-profile, City director. ...
India: Banking Revolution on Cards - RBI Clears 11 Payments Banks
August, 20 2015
India - Banking, as we have known it, appears headed for an upheaval. The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday 'in principle' cleared 11 entities - including department of posts, top conglomerates such as Reliance Industries and Aditya Birla Group, telecom giants like Airtel and Vodafone, and a number of tech and finance companies - to set up 'payments banks' ...
B. Magnoni, President, EA Consultants: Are the Poor, Especially Women, Being Squeezed Out of the MFIs Set Up to Serve Them?
August, 19 2015
Global - If the sector globally were one financial institution, it would rank at around 23rd in the United States in terms of assets, about where a mid-sized regional bank might lie.The main difference is that to serve their clients, microfinance institutions (MFIs) offer loans via more than 220,000 loan officers, who operate out of 47,000 outlets worldwide ...
Philippines: Ways to Sustain Financial Inclusion Gains Proposed
August, 19 2015
Philippines - While the Philippines has made strides in its financial inclusion efforts, an economist said the government’s role should remain limited to regulatory supervision while allowing the private sector to develop more accessible products and services ...
Bangladesh: Four in Five Households Have Access to Financial Services
August, 19 2015
Bangladesh - Four in five households in Bangladesh have access to financial services, thanks to improvements in the networks of banks and microfinance institutions as well as a booming mobile banking segment, according to a new study ...
Kenya: Safaricom Foundation Launches Fund for Kenyan Youth-owned Startups
August, 19 2015
Kenya - The Safaricom Foundation has launched a revolving fund aimed at assisting youth-owned businesses in Kenya lacking access to micro-credit ...
India: MFI Credit Bureaus Comb Client Data to Smooth Microloans
August, 19 2015
India - These bureaus claim that their reports have helped slash delinquency rates in microfinance, but lenders tell a slightly different story ...
Investment Professionals Take Note of ESG Issues
August, 18 2015
Global - Almost three-quar­ters of in­vest­ment pro­fes­sion­als worldwide take en­vi­ron­men­tal, social, and corporate gov­er­nance (ESG) issues into con­sid­er­a­tion in the in­vest­ment process, reveals a survey by the CFA Institute, a global as­so­ci­a­tion of in­vest­ment pro­fes­sion­als ...
Asia Pacific Leads the Way as Mobile Payments Head Towards US$1 Trillion
August, 18 2015
Global - Mobile payments globally will rocket to US$1 trillion in value by 2017, up from an estimated $500 million this year ...
The Key to Fighting Poverty in Africa
August, 18 2015
Africa - Small and mid-sized agribusinesses are a vital link in Africa’s local and regional agriculture markets. For smallholder producers, the vast majority of Africa’s farmers, such businesses buy harvests, transfer knowledge and procure inputs in bulk to help drive down farmers’ costs ...
Consumer Protection-certified Financial Institutions Now Serve More than 20 Million Low-income Clients
August, 18 2015
Global - The Smart Campaign, a global movement to embed a set of client-protection principles into the fabric of the microfinance industry, announced today that there are now more than 20 million low-income clients whose financial service provider has been certified as meeting the Campaign's standards for consumer protection. ...
IFC Invests in Azerbaijan’s AccessBank to Boost Financing for Smaller Businesses
August, 18 2015
Azerbaijan - IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is providing a $25 million subordinated loan to AccessBank, one of Azerbaijan’s leading financial institutions, in order to spur lending to smaller businesses, helping drive job creation and economic development across the country ...
India: Bandhan Bank Fixes Interest Rates
August, 17 2015
India - Bandhan Bank has fixed the rates of interest for savings and term deposits which would be offered to account holders after it starts banking operations, a top official has said. ...
Sophie Trémolet and Goufrane Mansour, Tremolet Consulting: Can Microfinance Help Boost Sanitation Coverage?
August, 17 2015
Global - Microfinance for business has had mixed impacts but there is evidence that it could succeed in funding sanitation facilities in developing countries. ...
Indonesia: Banks Reinstate Loans Program for Micro and Small Businesses
August, 14 2015
Indonesia - Three state banks have signed a partnership agreement for financing a people’s business credit (KUR) program, officially relaunching the program, which had been put on hold for more than seven months ...
Thai Debt Collector JMT Forays into Micro-finance Biz in Myanmar
August, 13 2015
Myanmar - JMT Network Services (JMT), a Thai-listed debt collector, will form a joint venture – JP Finance Co Ltd – with its partners, to operate a microfinance business in Myanmar. This was approved by the company’s board of directors recently ...
India: IFMR Holdings Raises $25 Million from Accion, LeapFrog, Lok Capital
August, 13 2015
India - Financial inclusion platform IFMR Holdings said it raised $25 million in funding from non-profit company Accion, private equity firm LeapFrog Investments and Lok Capital, an India impact investment firm ...
M-Pesa and the Rise of the Global Mobile Money Market
August, 12 2015
Global - M-Pesa’s impact in Kenya put mobile money services on the map; today there are a number of successful mobile money services around the world that are similar to or resultant from M-Pesa ...
Olga Tomilova, CGAP: Progress and Opportunities for Financial Inclusion in Turkey
August, 12 2015
Turkey - With almost 75 million residents (World Bank data as of 2013), Turkey is one of the largest upper middle-income countries with a vast potential to expand financial inclusion. ...
India: Microfinance Firm Janalakshmi Raises $28M through NCDs, Unsecured Loan
August, 11 2015
India - “This is the largest single investor subscription to NCDs issued by JFS. Most microfinance institutions are primarily funded by banks and private equity players and it is therefore critical for MFIs to diversify their sources of funding," said V S Radhakrishnan, CEO, JFS ...
India: Dual-authentication Technology a Boon for Self-help Groups
August, 11 2015
India - A small tweak in technology has changed the way women members of self-help groups (SHGs) in 50 villages of two blocks in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh carry out banking transactions ...
Ecuador Is The World's First Country With A Public Digital Cash System
August, 10 2015
Ecuador - The runaway success of mobile money products like M-Pesa, which first took off in Kenya, has inspired dozens of copycats around the world. Many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America now have services allowing people to store and transfer money using their cellphones ...
Philippines: Bill Creates Microfinance Regulator
August, 10 2015
Philippines - A measure creating a regulatory body for microfinance nongovernment organizations (NGOs) was passed by the Senate on third and final reading on Monday ...
Start-up Apis Raises $150m for Emerging Fintech Honeypots
August, 10 2015
Global - The speed of Apis’s fundraising underlines how backers of private equity are increasingly keen on funds that are devoted to specific sectors and untapped niches and markets ...
Zimbabwe: European Investors Target AfrAsia Bank
August, 10 2015
Zimbabwe - European investors are set to acquire a majority stake in MicroKing a subsidiary of AfrAsia Banking Zimbabwe Limited (ABZL). The consortium of European investors, Microcred and AfricInvest, will invest $25 million in the microfinance unit, Reserve Bank governor John Mangudya said ...
Jordan: Queen Noor Launches Sharia-compliant Microfinance Institution
August, 08 2015
Jordan - Her Majesty Queen Noor, founder and chairperson of the King Hussein Foundation, has launched Ethmar, “the first” microfinance institution compliant with Sharia (Islamic law) in Jordan, according to a statement released Saturday. ...
India: MFI Industry on an Interest Rate Cut Spree
August, 08 2015
India - Lessons learned by the microfinance industry from the events about five years ago, leading to near collapse of the industry, are now being manifested by a flurry of volunteer interest rates cut ...
Sri Lanka: Insurance for Micro Borrowers
August, 08 2015
Sri Lanka - A low-cost insurance scheme that will protect micro borrowers has been launched by Commercial Bank of Ceylon in association with two insurance companies, Ceylinco Insurance and BIMA ...
Only 15% Pakistanis Avail Digital Financial Services
August, 07 2015
Pakistan - Only 15% Pakistanis avail Digital Financial Services (DFS) and there has been no significant increase in the user base or registrations between 2013 and 2014, said a Financial Inclusion Insights (FII) survey report, jointly conducted and launched by Karandaaz Pakistan and Inter Media ...
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
August, 06 2015
Global - Consensus reached on ambitious new Sustainable Development Agenda to end poverty by 2030 and universally promote shared economic prosperity, social development and environmental protection ...
Peru Launches National Financial Inclusion Strategy to Expand Financial Inclusion
August, 05 2015
Peru - In July 2015, the country launched a National Financial Inclusion Strategy, which commits the government to ensuring that at least 75% of adults have access to a transaction account by 2021 ...
Mexico’s Anti-Poverty Programmes Are Losing the Battle
August, 05 2015
Mexico - According to the latest survey by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), published Jul. 23, 55.3 million people live in poverty in Mexico – three million more than in 2012 – equivalent to 46.2 percent of the population of 121 million ...
Safaricom Will Not Be Forced to Loosen its Dominant Hold on Kenya’s Mobile-money Market
August, 05 2015
Kenya - At the center of the dispute is whether Safaricom has been abusing its dominant position in the market. The Communications Authority (CA), with support from the ICT ministry, and Safaricom’s rival Airtel Kenya, is arguing that the company is a monopoly since it controls more than 50% of the mobile market ...
India: One Set of Niche Bank Licences by Aug-end - Rajan
August, 05 2015
India - RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday said he will announce at least one set of payment/small finance bank licences before the end of the month ...
Cambodia: Islamic Finance on the Table
August, 05 2015
Cambodia - The use of Islamic microfinance as an alternative to conventional forms of micro-lending was on top of the agenda at the World Islamic Economic Forum roundtable in Phnom Penh yesterday, with industry experts split on its possible inclusion in Cambodia’s basket of microfinance product offerings ...
Lina Salazar Ortegón, Inter-American Development Bank: Latin America - Low-income Millennials Present Big Market Opportunities
August, 04 2015
Latin America - Latin American GenYers who live on less than US$10 a day (the base of the economic pyramid, or BoP) will shape the demands of the future middle class in this region in the coming decades ...
Indonesia: Empowering the Poor through Islamic Microfinance
August, 04 2015
Indonesia - BMT is a unique Indonesian model of Islamic microfinance institution, established as a social enterprise to lift people from the valley of poverty ...
Amit Bouri, CEO and Co-founder of the Global Impact Investing Network: A Coming of Age for Impact Investing
August, 03 2015
Global - The new benchmark is an indication of a fast-growing and increasingly sophisticated impact investing industry. ...
India: Mudra Sanctions Loans of Rs240 Crore to MFIs
August, 03 2015
India - Government’s refinancing scheme Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency (Mudra) Ltd, which was launched in April under the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana with the aim of addressing funding problems of at least 57 million small business across the country, has disbursed Rs.97.5 crore to microfinance institutions (MFIs) ...
Wealth Without Currency: Social Money Usage in Rural Nigeria
August, 03 2015
Nigeria - Items that have only economic values can be conveniently stored and transferred in cash. However, items that have both social and economic values cannot be stored in cash; that is the relevance of social monie ...

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