Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization最新文献

{"title":"A Market-Building Approach to Financial Inclusion","authors":"Arjuna Costa, Tilman Ehrbeck","doi":"10.1162/inov_a_00229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00229","url":null,"abstract":"innovations / volume 10, number 1-2 © 2015 Arjuna Costa and Tilman Ehrbeck For many people around the world, gaining access to basic financial services such as savings, remittances, and credit might be the key to unlock poverty. Poverty, after all, is more complex than privation; it is also characterized by precariousness. Research shows that, in developed and developing countries alike, the earnings of low-income households are not just low, they are also likely to be irregular. When households can save, access credit, get insurance, send and receive money safely, and make payments easily, they’re better able to manage cash flow spikes and weather shocks that might otherwise send them back into poverty. In the last few years, the world has made real, measurable progress on fighting poverty through financial inclusion. The World Bank reported this year, in its 2014 Findex survey, that two billion working-age adults are unbanked, down from 2.5 billion in 2011. This is a great achievement for global development, made possible mainly by harnessing the power of markets and innovative technology. Today, 62 percent of adults worldwide now have access to at least one formal financial account, compared to 51 percent just three years earlier. At the macro level, financial inclusion is also critical to economic growth, and it advances many other development priorities such as health, education, and women’s empowerment. As more people gain access to tools to manage their money, their ability to build assets and smooth consumption not only improves the welfare of their own household, it also expands possibilities for whole economies. This array of benefits is why financial inclusion is explicitly called for in several of the new Sustainable Development Goals the United Nations adopted in September 2015. While hundreds of millions of people entering the banking the system since 2011 is a tremendous accomplishment, the work is not done. The UN’s goals call for ensuring that all men and women, “particularly the poor and vulnerable,” have equal access to financial services (as well as property rights, technology, and other economic resources)","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132396379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reaching the Excluded Responsibly: The MasterCard Foundation's Strategy for Financial Inclusion","authors":"A. Miles","doi":"10.1162/INOV_A_00225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_A_00225","url":null,"abstract":"innovations / volume 10, number 1-2 © 2015 Ann Miles Anyone working in international development knows that there is no magic solution for reducing poverty and improving the lives of people affected by it. The story of development is one of persistent and incremental change that enables people living in poverty to overcome barriers and inequities and empowers them to prosper. Financial inclusion is a critical element of such change. What drives that incremental change? While there are many factors, innovation is prime among them. Finding, fostering, and spreading the word about new initiatives that are shown to be effective, including financial inclusion initiatives, is essential. This usually involves putting end-users, the ultimate beneficiaries of financial inclusion programs, at the center of all planning. That is why we at The MasterCard Foundation have client-centered innovation at the heart of our programs, particularly those that promote financial inclusion. The challenges of financial inclusion are well known, as the most recent Global Findex report attests: some two billion people in the world, mostly in developing countries and emerging economies, have no access to the basic financial products and services that many of us take for granted. For people living in poverty, not having the ability to save, borrow, or move money reliably, easily, and inexpensively is a significant impediment to improving their lives1. The good news is that ever more people are finding themselves financially included. While the Findex report outlines the work that still needs to be done, the number of people around the globe who have access to financial products and services has increased by about 20 percent in the past three years—some 700 million adults—bringing the rate of the world’s banked from 51 percent to 62 percent. Why is that good news? Because access to basic financial services is a fundamental necessity that helps people achieve their economic and personal goals: opening a new","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130157730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The End of Financial Marginalization Is in Sight: Here's the Roadmap","authors":"K. McGowan, Priya Jaisinghani","doi":"10.1162/inov_a_00226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00226","url":null,"abstract":"innovations / volume 10, number 1-2 © 2015 Kathleen McGowan and Priya Jaisinghani We now have the tools and knowledge to radically reshape financial infrastructure to be ultra-inclusive, to spur the proliferation of diverse financial products that help the poor weather financial shocks and seize opportunities, to enable governments to operate more transparently and efficiently, and to foster new models of service delivery that can scale sustainably. Realizing this vision, however, will take deliberate, coordinated action by policymakers and regulators, and far more collaboration between the financial services industry and government than exists today. Above all, it will mean recognizing that ending “economic untouchability,” to quote Indian Prime Minister Modi, is an imperative for societies committed to shared prosperity and accountable governance. Today, some two billion people around the world manage their already precarious financial lives without the help of tools the world’s banked population uses to make retail purchases, buy a home, access health care, educate their children, and save for emergencies and retirement. Not surprisingly, most of this unbanked population live in developing economies, are disproportionately poorer than their countrymen, and more likely than not are women. Furthermore, despite recent World Bank data indicating that account ownership globally has increased over recent years, the types of financial products available often do not meet the urgent needs of the poor to even out highly variable incomes and reach longer-term goals.1 Thus, the oft-cited figure of two billion unbanked worldwide undoubtedly masks a far greater number of underbanked—the individuals and institutions poorly served by the financial products that are available to them. Until it becomes profitable to bank the poor, financial inclusion will remain illusory. Creating a market for commercially viable financial services relevant and affordable to the poor requires investing in shared infrastructure and aligning economic incentives so that serving the poor isn’t just possible but profitable. To make this happen, governments and their partners in the development community must redefine which","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131448624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Case for Farm Finance","authors":"S. Hanson","doi":"10.1162/INOV_A_00234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_A_00234","url":null,"abstract":"innovations / volume 10, number 1-2 © 2015 Stephanie Hanson When you enter Wilbroda Nafula’s living room in rural western Kenya, you might be surprised to see three solar lamps, all charging cell phones. Wilbroda, a Kenyan farmer and mother of three, doesn’t advertise her business with a sign outside her home. She doesn’t even live close to other shops or at the village center. But word has spread among her neighbors that she has a cell phone charging business, and there is plenty of demand for her services. “I tell you, in this mobile phone business, I eat well!” says Wilbroda, laughing aloud. Just four years ago, Wilbroda wasn’t eating well, and neither was her family. Her only source of income was the maize she harvested from a half acre of land, and she was never able to harvest enough maize to feed the family through to the next harvest. In 2011, she decided to take a seed-and-fertilizer loan to try to improve the production on her land. Along with the loan, she received training on correct agriculture practices, including food storage and market price fluctuations. That year, she produced an excellent harvest, stored enough food to feed her family, and started saving money to replace the roof on her house. By 2013, she had replaced her roof, invested in chickens, and purchased her first solar light. By 2014, she had a calf, a second solar light, and enough money to put her children in private primary school. This year she purchased her third solar light, and she’s planning to expand her poultry business. Wilbroda is like hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers all over the world,1 with one critical difference: the agriculture loan she received in 2011 changed the trajectory of her life. She is now part of the tiny percentage of smallholder farmers who have access to finance. Smallholder farmers are the largest group of people living in poverty, and they are also the most financially excluded.2 Roughly 70 percent of the world’s poor are farmers, and the majority of them are unbanked. These 500 million farmers are in turn supporting as many as 2.5 billion people.3 Although most smallholder farmers are struggling to produce enough food, they have the potential to produce dramatically more. The Global Yield Gap and Productivity Atlas, developed by the Daugherty Water for Food","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126314910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making the Invisible Visible: A Strategy for Inclusion (Innovations Case Narrative: Mission Asset Fund)","authors":"José A. Quiñonez","doi":"10.1162/INOV_A_00238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_A_00238","url":null,"abstract":"She passed away when I was nine, too young to understand the complex and dangerous nature of life in poverty. At that time, I had to muster everything inside of me just to survive the avalanche of sorrow and change in our family life. It was only as an adult that I came to terms with my painful childhood. I see it now as the source of the deep empathy I have for people who suffer and struggle in the world. That is why I’ve dedicated my life to working against poverty, and it is how I became the founding CEO of Mission Asset Fund (MAF), a nonprofit organization that strives to create a fair financial marketplace for hardworking families. When I joined MAF in 2007, the organization was a nonprofit start-up with plans to help low-income immigrants in San Francisco’s Mission District. Eight years later, MAF is nationally recognized for developing Lending Circles, a social loan program based on people coming together to lend and borrow money. With cutting-edge technology, we transformed this invisible practice into a force for good. Program participants are freeing themselves from the grasp of predatory lenders by opening bank accounts, building credit histories, paying down highcost debt, and increasing their savings. They are investing in businesses, buying homes, and saving for a better future. Lending Circles brings to light what’s already good in people’s lives. And within that light, participants are forging a sure path into the financial mainstream, unlocking their true economic potential every step of the way. The program’s success is serving as a model in the fight against poverty, demonstrating new and effective ways of helping low-income people without belittling them in the","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"344 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124244164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leveraging the Capital of the Community (Innovations Case Narrative: eMoneyPool)","authors":"Francisco Cervera","doi":"10.1162/INOV_A_00237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_A_00237","url":null,"abstract":"world for centuries. Members of the group help each other pay for short-term goals by leveraging the capital resources of their community. Just as some people turn to a credit card when they need to make a large purchase, others turn to money pools. In one form or another, the money pool concept has always been part of my family’s life. As a child, I often went to my Aunt Silvina’s house after school, where I would wait until my mom got off work. I occasionally saw my aunt go to the front door and exchange money with her friends. I was too young to understand what was going on, but that was my introduction to a money pool. How do traditional money pools work? A small group of people, usually ten, contribute money to a common fund, from which they take turns receiving the entire lump sum. A group member with an immediate need draws from the pool first, then repays the group in regular installments. A group member with a less urgent need will choose a later turn while making contributions to the pool up front, effectively using it as savings tool. When their scheduled turn comes around, they draw from the pool to pay for whatever they choose. It’s a tightly synchronized dance, where everyone knows ahead of time when their payments are due and when it’s their turn to draw from the pool. This allows them to plan ahead for large purchases or life events. Surprisingly, the vast majority of participants say that saving money is the main benefit of participation. So why choose a money pool over a savings account? Because unlike traditional savings accounts, money pools offer participants access to funds before they could have saved for a purchase on their own. Lets imagine that John and Jessica both put away $100 a month. It will take John ten months to save $1,000 using a regular savings account. Jessica, on the","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131083746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Big Data, Small Credit: The Digital Revolution and Its Impact on Emerging Market Consumers","authors":"Arjuna Costa, Anamitra Deb, M. Kubzansky","doi":"10.1162/inov_a_00240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00240","url":null,"abstract":"ment are poised to deliver huge impact by bringing formal, accessible, and affordable credit to hundreds of millions of aspiring middle-class consumers in emerging markets. At the forefront of this change is a burgeoning new field that we’re calling “Big Data, Small Credit” (BDSC). Around the world, many emerging-market consumers remain severely limited in their access to formal financial services, particularly unsecured credit. In India alone, in 2014, more than 400 million people borrowed money—but fewer than one in seven were approved for a formal loan.1 Indeed, this experience of being “invisible” to formal lenders is prevalent among billions of “thin file” or “no file” consumers living in nearly all of today’s emerging markets. But these consumers may not remain “invisible” to formal lenders for long, thanks in part to their rising use of technology. Well over 650 million adults in India—four out of every five—already have a mobile phone in their pocket, and most of these will be smartphones by 2020. More than 240 million Indians have access to the Internet and social media.2 Seven in 10 users of mobile broadband smartphone in India regularly stream videos on their phones; six in 10 use social networks.3 And every time these individuals make a phone call, send a text, browse the Internet, engage social media networks, or top up their prepaid cards, they deepen the digital footprints they are leaving behind. These digital footprints are helping to spark a new kind of revolution in lending. In the last few years, a cluster of fast-emerging and innovative firms has begun","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126499554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lived Experience: The X Factor in Finding Great Companies","authors":"R. Baird, Jason Towns","doi":"10.1162/INOV_A_00236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_A_00236","url":null,"abstract":"great idea and the entrepreneurial skills to bring it to life could operate on a level playing field—in other words, if entrepreneurship were more democratic—our society would be much better off. From the customer’s perspective, a pedigree doesn’t matter, but from an investor’s perspective it often matters far too much. A top investment bank or consulting firm will care where you went to school and what your grades were, and your CV may determine whether a Fortune 500 company will “buy” your expertise. But these things won’t matter to your customers—as long as you are giving them a great product or an outstanding service. We have learned the value of empowering entrepreneurs who have lived experience, and the competitive advantage this offers forward-thinking investors. Locating and supporting entrepreneurs with varied life experiences can lead to more successful companies. We believe that it can, in fact, lead to the development of products and services that the majority of people actually need and are asking for, rather than those that a small segment of investors think people want. This competitive advantage is particularly true with financial services technology, or the FinTech sector, where new ventures are more likely than those in other fields to be business-to-consumer enterprises. Many EdTech companies, for example, deal with schools and school boards or offer their services to major companies like Pearson. In the health sector, entrepreneurs are more likely to deal with hospitals or insurance companies than to be at a patient’s bedside. FinTech is different. While there are certainly plenty of business-to-business financial services, many of the most innovative ventures deal directly with the consumer—investment advisor and money manager services, fraud protection, and, increasingly, alternatives to predatory check-cashing and lending companies. Therefore, the product seller and the product user are likely to have a stronger connection, due to their lived experiences. FinTech also addresses the needs associated with small businesses, which many aspiring entrepreneurs are familiar with. In this essay, we introduce a number of entrepreneurs from backgrounds and regions that traditionally have received too little investment, but who nevertheless","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134083532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Filling the Gap: How Technology Enables Access to Finance for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises","authors":"Usman Ahmed, T. Beck, C. McDaniel, Simon Schropp","doi":"10.1162/inov_a_00239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00239","url":null,"abstract":"Traditional financial services are rapidly being reformed by technology. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for more than one-half of the world’s GDP and employ two-thirds of the global workforce, however a key barrier to growth faced by SMEs around the globe is access to financing. This is not a new issue, as the onerous information, administration, and collateral requirements associated with traditional loans have inhibited SMEs from seeking or securing financing. The 2008 financial crisis only exacerbated the problem, as many local retail banks (often the primary providers of SME financing) closed their doors and the appetite for taking on high-risk SME loans was quelled. Online business lending may be stepping in to fill this gap by resolving many of the barriers associated with traditional SME financing. This paper analyzes data from PayPal Inc., a company best known for its global online payment system, and from Kiva, a crowdsourcing platform. PayPal Working Capital launched in late 2013; it is a product that enables SMEs to apply for and obtain short-term credit. Our objective is to understand how technology is impacting SMEs’ ability to access financing. Our findings suggest the following: (i) online business loans have stepped in to fill the SME funding gap left in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis; (ii) young and minority-owned businesses with low and moderate income benefit particularly from online business loans; and (iii) online business loans can boost the growth of SMEs in under-served counties. Based on increased sales of businesses that have received PPWC loans, we estimate that programs like this have the potential to boost economic activity considerably.","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117134199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Internet's Language Barrier","authors":"Iris Orriss","doi":"10.1162/INOV_A_00223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_A_00223","url":null,"abstract":"everyone the power to share information. Why is it so important for people to connect? Connectedness puts information at people’s fingertips. Connectedness equals participation in the knowledge economy, which is the source of future growth, jobs, and productivity. Connectedness creates opportunity. There are approximately seven billion people on the planet today. Only around one-third, an estimated 2.7 billion people, are connected to the Internet. About half of those, 1.3 billion people, are on Facebook, with one billion accessing the site from a mobile device. In emerging markets, where connectivity is currently lowest, most people use only mobile devices. In developed countries, average Internet connectivity is around 74 percent of the total population, compared to around 13 percent in India, 20 percent in Africa and 21 percent in South East Asia. There are many barriers to connectivity in different parts of the world. For the majority of people not yet connected, the main obstacles are social and economic. The cost of data and devices is too high, and demand for Internet services may be low among people who have yet to understand their value. For a smaller population, mostly in remote regions, it is the absence of basic Internet infrastructure that holds back the spread of the Internet – cell towers have yet to be constructed and communities don’t yet have electricity. These are enormous problems, and they rightly deserve a great deal of attention from those working to close the digital divide. But another important challenge that is often overlooked is just as critical to getting more people to use the Internet and participate in the global knowledge economy. It’s the language barrier.","PeriodicalId":422331,"journal":{"name":"Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129351173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}