1. Ultra-Poor Programs: A newly published paper from Jonathan Bauchet, Shamika Ravi, and FAI's Jonathan Morduch looks at "ultra-poor" programs and how labor markets affect outcomes. Journal of Development Economics (paywall)
2. Development Research: Couldn't make it to Oxford's 2015 CSAE conference? No worries, David Evans provides a round up of the sessions, neatly summarizing and categorizing papers in two (or fewer) sentences. The World Bank: Development Impact
3. Mobile Money: Will agents become a permanent part of mobile money or are they the equivalent of training wheels? GSMA
4. Product Innovation: In crowd-sourced innovation news, the 2015 Innovation Fund for Mobile Money Challenge is officially open and OpenIdeo has a current challenge focused on financial empowerment and inclusion. NextBillion and Ideo
5. Savings: Why do 75% of Kenya's PostBank youth savings accounts remain dormant? The answer may lie with how involved young people are (or are not) in intra-household financial management. World Savings Bank Institute
Blog
SEARCH BLOG
STAFF PICKS
NYU Wagner Graduate School
105 E 17th Street
New York, NY 10003
© 2026 Financial Access Initiative
NYU Accessibility Guidelines
Editor’s Note: I’m going to assume that you are seeing plenty of AI content (news and papers, not AI slop, though I’m sure you’re getting plenty of that too) from other sources, so I’m trying to think hard about the marginal value that the faiV can provide. As far as I’ve gotten so far: a) make sure that directly AI-related content does not take up more than 2 of the 5 items, and b) try to focus specifically on the cybersecurity issue for financial inclusion. Beyond that, I’m open to feedback on the value you get from the faiV in relation to AI to help guide us in the future. On a different note, I’ll be making a brief cameo appearance at the e-MFP Inclusive Finance Conference to moderate the opening plenary. If you haven’t registered, do so and I hope to see you there! - Tim Ogden