La pandemia ha elevado el perfil de los Servicios Financieros Digitales (SFD), los cuales han permitido una distribución sorprendentemente rápida de los fondos de apoyo social, ofreciendo un camino para brindar servicios financieros de forma segura y a escala. Sin embargo, aún quedan asuntos importantes que considerar en cuanto al despliegue e impacto final de los SFD. ¿Quiénes están siendo excluidos? ¿Cómo podemos asegurarnos de que los nuevos actores y modelos empresariales incorporen las necesidades de las comunidades y los clientes de escasos recursos? Esta edición de faiVLive reúne a profesionales e investigadores expertos para abordar estas preguntas y debatir el camino a seguir para los SFD y la inclusión financiera en América Latina. El webinar tuvo lugar el 15 de septiembre. Todavía se puede acceder a la grabación aquí.
Read MoreEditor's Note: Of particular note, this Tuesday (September 15th) at 10am Eastern there is a special edition of faiVLive in Spanish covering Digital Financial Services in Latin America. I'll be hosting with Gabriela Zapata moderating, and Kiki DelValle, Barbara Magnoni, and Xavier Faz will be joining us. Register here.
I apologize in advance if the final links on resilience undermine your resilience at the beginning of the week.
–Tim Ogden
Read MoreIn a new article by Kelsey Piper on Vox, FAI’s Tim Ogden weighed in on the importance of mobile money in banking the unbanked in Kenya and the potential to spread Kenya’s model to its neighbors and around the world.
Read MoreIn a new article out from the Economics Observatory, FAI’s Tim Ogden and Jonathan Morduch, along with their co-authors Muhammad Meki, Simon Quinn, and Farah Said explain the global and local forces that combine to make the crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic different from past disruptions.
Read MoreEditor's Note: I feel like the typical "everyone is gone in August" thing hasn't been happening this year, but there is so much that's different that I can't really tell. And while I took some time off in July, and even went somewhere, it didn't feel like a vacation since there was still so much effort needed figuring out what the boys and I could do in a time of distancing and lockdowns. I hope you have had some time mentally away, but you know, not all of your time mentally away.
--Tim Ogden
Read MoreThe story of Becky and Jeremy Moore (names changed) from Financial Diaries was recently cited in a New York Times article about budgeting during the coronavirus. Becky and Jeremy’s story illustrates one major lesson from the Financial Diaries study of 2012–2013 — that financial insecurity is not simply a result of not having enough money, but rather of not having money at the right time, when it is needed. Financial Diaries documents how income volatility affects millions of Americans in different ways, from working on commission to unpredictable work hours, making it all the more difficult to set aside enough cash to weather a global pandemic.
Read MoreMany microfinance loan officers in Pakistan receive a high proportion of their pay in performance bonuses that reward keeping delinquencies low. Normally, the performance incentives are well-balanced, and loan officers follow guidelines for respectful client treatment. But in the face of rising delinquencies due to the Covid-19 lockdown, FAI research reported a tendency for loan officers to resort to high-pressure loan collection tactics to protect their bonuses.
Read MoreEditor's Note: It's been a bit more than four years that I've been writing the faiV and though I probably haven't had as many links as minutes in a year, it's a safe bet that there have been more than 200 faiVs and 4000 links in that time. So I took a bit of an unannounced hiatus for the month. I hope you missed the faiV.
If you did, and you'd be interested in being part of a feedback panel that we are putting together to help us make decisions about the future of the faiV, please just respond to this email. And if you missed us but think the faiV is already perfect, feel free to respond to say that, but more importantly, please tell a few friends and colleagues to subscribe.
In public services announcements, there are a couple of research funding opportunities that may be of interest to you: a) UNESCAP has a new RFP for evidence-based interventions to support women entrepreneurs (in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Nepal, Samoa, or Vietnam); and b) ANDE and the Canadian IDRC have a call for Expressions of Interest on studying the experiences of women in venture accelerators in Latin America and SSA.
--Tim Ogden
Read MoreIn this podcast, produced by the Development Policy Center at Australian National University, Tim Ogden discusses a necessary new lens for research on migration and household finances, based on a paper co-authored with Micheal Clemens. Typically, migrant remittances have been treated as windfall income by policy makers and researchers. However, from a family’s perspective, remittances from a relative overseas are a return on investment. Thus, migration itself is a strategy for financial management.
Read MoreFrom the start of the outbreak, digital finance providers were seen as a solution to some of the effects of COVID-19. Mobile money providers potentially offer a safer alternative to cash and some governments immediately turned to digital solutions to distribute much needed cash relief. That digital providers offered creative solutions under pressure is laudable, but perhaps not surprising, as most digital services are born from an opportunity to improve a dysfunctional system.
Read MoreThanks to everyone who joined our faiVLive webinar about the future of Digital Financial Services on June 26th. Below you’ll find the recording and a list of resources discussed or shared by panelists and attendees during the call.
Read MoreThe pandemic has raised the profile of digital financial services, which have enabled amazingly rapid distribution of social support funds and may provide a path forward for delivering financial services safely and at scale. But there are important questions left to consider about the roll-out and ultimate impact of DFS. This edition of faiVLive brought together expert practitioners and researchers to address these questions, ranging from the impact of DFS on MFIs to digital security.
Read MoreThe pandemic has raised the profile of digital financial services, which have enabled amazingly rapid distribution of social support funds and may provide a path forward for delivering financial services safely and at scale. But there are important questions left to consider about the roll-out and ultimate impact of DFS. This edition of faiVLive brings together expert practitioners and researchers to address these questions, ranging from the impact of DFS on MFIs to digital security.
Read MoreEditor's Note: As with many others, I've found it very difficult figuring out what to say in this moment. Below I give it my best effort. Here, a couple of housekeeping notes:
The next faiVLive on hard questions about the evolution of digital financial services will be on June 26th at 9am Eastern. I'll be joined by Tamara Cook, Salah Goss, Moonmoon Shehrin, Greg Chen and Graham Wright. Register here.
FAI Visiting Fellow Beth Rhyne has a new post about the responsibility of DFIs to step up to the existential crisis for microfinance.
It's Compass survey time again! Fill out the e-MFPs survey, which is focused on COVID-19 response and recovery.
—Tim Ogden
Read MoreThanks to the COVID-19 crisis, many microfinance borrowers can’t repay their loans. That in turn means that microfinance institutions (MFIs) won’t be able to fulfill obligations to their investors. And that means that microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) will have trouble maintaining obligations to the ultimate funders, who are often large, well-financed Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). So, there’s a value chain that often looks like this: Customers < MFIs < MIVs < DFIs. And if the chain breaks down, customers end up alone and without support.
Read MoreEditor's Note: Let's kick-off with a couple of public service announcements: The Household Finance Research Initiative at Dvara Research has a call for research proposals on household finance in India that is due on the 31st. The "tracks" are applied data science and primary research and there are 10 total grants available. Apply!
In the US, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, the Gates Foundation and the Walmart Foundation also have a new RFP for research projects focused on "stabilizing workers during the Covid-19 crisis and offer pathways for longer-term economic security and mobility." For the first time ever, the BREAD conference on Development Economics will be live streamed. It's today and tomorrow at 11am Eastern. Here's the link for today, and the one for tomorrow. This morning Emma Riley will be presenting her work on providing microcredit to women business owners via mobile money accounts; others are on "Rationing the Commons" and "Manipulation Proof Machine Learning." Tomorrow, Morgan Hardy will present her paper with Gisella Kagy and Lena Song on bargaining behavior among microentrepreneurs, followed by papers on state capacity and taxation; and inequality and place-based policy.
—Tim Ogden
Read MoreBy Michelle Kempis and Jonathan Morduch
As the current pandemic pushes the global economy to the brink, we decided to take a look at what surveys say about how well households plan to deal with big emergencies.
The only truly global data we know are from the World Bank’s Global Findex survey. The Findex reports on household surveys from 140 countries, and it greatly enriches what we know about financial inclusion. One section is devoted to asking how respondents would cover a large emergency equivalent to 1/20th GNI of per capita. It’s an under-exploited resource—but see this and this —and a bit tricky to interpret.
Read More
