1. Mobile Money: Will a handful of high-profile fraud cases damage mobile money? It depends on how fast operators can adapt 21st century security and authentication systems to protect customers and retain their trust. NextBillion
2. Retirement Savings: For the 53 million public pension participants in Mexico, making a contribution to a retirement account is now as easy as buying a pack of gum or a lottery ticket (well, except for the delayed gratification). CFI
3. Microcredit: Is there a tradeoff in using digital products to serve microcredit clients and maintaining a strong client relationship built on trust or is it possible to have it all? SEEP Network
Week of May 18, 2015
1. Income Volatility: New research based on transaction data confirms findings from the US Financial Diaries (USFD) on income volatility - households' incomes vary from month to month and savings are inadequate to cover the mismatches in income and spending. FAI's Jonathan Morduch notes that in the USFD sample, income volatility is greatest for poorer households but remains high even as households increase their incomes. The Wall Street Journal
2. Entrepreneurship: Middle-class families account for 60 percent of new business ventures. But rising income and wealth inequality may be constraining the middle-class and preventing business expansion, economic growth, and job creation. Center for American Progress
3. Migration and Household Finances: Families working and/or living on both sides of the Mexican-American border must continuously navigate transactions in different currencies, both monetary and social. New research focuses on these exchanges and their functions in various cultural contexts. IMTFI Part 1 and Part 2
Week of May 11, 2015
1. Ultra-Poor: A RCT involving more than 10,000 households in six countries reports improvements in livelihoods for participants in a "graduation model" poverty intervention. While the programs didn't show effects in all contexts, cost-benefit analysis suggests promising returns on investment. Nature and Science
2. Savings: When participants in a study in India received compensation directly to a personal account, they reported higher rates of savings and consumption (regardless of gender) than peers receiving cash. However, when account holders were switched to cash payments, savings and consumption activity reverted to their original patterns. VoxEU
3. Social Networks: A new working paper from Angelucci et al. uses data from the Progresa evaluations to assess the degree to which family and social networks insure each other and provide funding for investment. They find that for every dollar received from Progresa, by a member of the network, food expenditures rise by .60 to .70 cents and investments in children also rise. J-PAL
Week of May 4, 2015
1. Financial Inclusion: This week, InterMedia released the results of its research on digital financial inclusion within eight of the poorest countries across Africa and Asia, focusing on gender divides, customer engagement, and financial behaviors. Financial Inclusion Insights
2. Mobile Money: Data from 2014 reports 13.4 million registered bKash accounts in Bangladesh...but only 5.1 unique users. A deeper look at agent and user behavior begins to explain this 8 million user gap. World Economic Forum
3. Gender and Development: "Not to empower these missing men is to condemn the poor woman in their lives to have to do absolutely everything for their families, from making all the money to changing all the diapers. Is that right or fair?" CFI
Week of April 27, 2015
1. Impact Investing: There's no clear definition of "impact investing," made apparent by the US Council on Foundations' annual conference and the Milken Institute Global Conference both having impact investing tracks this week populated by quite different people. Read Tim Ogden's reflections from the Council on Foundations (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) where the emphasis was on starting small, and Jean Case's take on Milken Institute's theme of going big.
2. Microinsurance: Does the microinsurance industry have anything to show after 10 years of experiment, investment and excitement? Not much, according to Peter Gross. CGAP
3. Remittances: Since their initial launch two years ago, Orange and MTN's cross-border mobile money transfer services have exhibited rapid adoption rates and transfer activity in West Africa. Does this success signal potential disruption in the African remittance market or does the preexisting socioeconomic integration of the region make this a unique case? GSMA
Week of April 13, 2015
1. Commitment Savings: FAI's Managing Director Timothy Ogden discusses the world’s largest and most successful commitment savings program for low-income households - the US tax system.
2. Financial Inclusion: The number of "unbanked" individuals dropped 20% between 2011 and 2014 to 2 billion adults, according to the recently released Global Findex report.
3. Impact Evaluations: "The debate cannot stop with whether or not transformation has occurred... The debate has to include how we define transformation and how we measure it...If there is no silver bullet for reducing poverty, neither does there appear to be a silver bullet for measuring transformation."
Read MoreWeek of April 20, 2015
1. Digital Consumer Protection: Last week we learned about the drivers of demand for M-Shwari. This week, a follow-up post takes a deep dive into customer's understanding of the service, including risk, privacy, security, and terms of use. CGAP
2. Business Training: Research on business training rarely picks up significant effects. A team of business school researchers look at what happens if a training program is more targeted both in participant selection and in curriculum. International Growth Centre
3. Labor Markets: Issues of asymmetric information and the prevalence of gender-based violence in some areas may be contributing to why women are "missing" from rural labor markets. Microlinks
Week of April 6, 2015
1. Digital Payments: A body of research contains evidence that people spend more with credit cards than cash because the former reduces the "pain of paying." Do mobile wallets like Apple Pay increase or relieve this pain?
2. G2P Transfers: The US doesn't drug test farmers receiving crop subsidies or requirePell Grant recipients to limit their field of study - so why do the poor have to prove they are worthy of aid?
3. Mobile Money Agents: Agents in Uganda use creative ways to "bend the rules" in order to meet the needs of a diverse customer base.
Week of March 30, 2015
1. Microfinance: FAI’s Jonathan Morduch discusses the limitations of microfinance, the promise of new technologies, and the need for quality, effective financial services for the poor. The Wall Street Journal
2. Student Debt: A burgeoning student loan repayment strike is gaining attention from the US government. It bears a striking resemblance to microcredit repayment crises, with much bigger implications: the US government guarantees billions in student debt.The Washington Post
3. MFI Transparency: Microfinance Transparency announced that after six years, it will no longer continue collecting global MFI pricing data. CEO Chuck Waterfield explains what led to that decision and what it means for industry transparency. NextBillion
4. Social Impact Bonds: "[E]ven skilled nonprofits and intermediaries will have trouble translating great ideas into contracts that really provide the right incentives. When you look at how the parties do the accounting, how they measure "savings,"... it gets inelegant, to say the least." Chronicle of Philanthropy
5. Remittances: Understanding the behavioral mechanisms behind migrants' decisions to use specific transfer services (both formal and informal) can potentially inform the design of more effective services for the poor. MicroSave
Week of March 23, 2015
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
