New & Noteworthy

"Isn't the goal of financial inclusion for everyone by 2020 quite ambitious?” That’s one of the questions CFI Managing Director Elisabeth Rhyne is asked in Credit Suisse’s new Corporate Responsibility newsletter. In the newsletter, Elisabeth Rhyne is interviewed on financial inclusion, the FI2020 project and its sizable goal, and the strategies, stakeholders, and other tenets underpinning banking the unbanked. To read the interview, click here.

In a new Financial Inclusion 2020 video, leaders across sectors discuss why more and more financial services providers are expanding their focus to include banking the unbanked. After all, many of those without formal financial services don't have incomes to support big or frequently-used products, and their circumstances often present challenges for core services dimensions. The video features Pamela Flaherty of Citi Foundation, Tony Lythgoe of the IFC, and Paul Tregidgo of Credit Suisse, among others. To learn about how investing in financial inclusion has become increasingly sustainable as well as profitable, watch the video, available here.

Expanding financial inclusion to the 2.5 billion unbanked individuals around the world is essential, but why does it matter, and is it possible in the next six years? In a new CFI video, global leaders examine these questions, discussing trends in technology, the opportunities inclusion presents across industries, and more. Among those featured in the video are Ajay Banga, Cherie Blair, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Duvvuri Subbarao. To watch the video, click here.

Through our strategic partnership with Fundación Paraguaya, Handicap International, and the Smart Campaign, over the past two years we’ve developed a series of tools and trainings to guide MFIs in becoming disability inclusive. This comprehensive toolkit, which includes actionable implementation steps, is now public for any MFI or financial services provider who wishes to use the resource. To access the toolkit, available in English, Spanish, and French, click here.

We’re pleased to introduce you to our online interactive Global Forum Roundup. This one-time “magazine” includes key messages from the plenary sessions and roundtables on the Roadmap to Financial Inclusion, personal commitments from many participants, resource links, and FI2020′s plans for 2014 and beyond. Click on any photo within the magazine to watch session videos and other content. To view the magazine, click here. A PDF version of this Roundup is available here.

This week Reuters published Big Banks See Rich Opportunities in World’s Poorest, an article that offers an overview of financial inclusion – the benefits to customers, the market opportunity for providers, the underpinning trends and new technologies making this outreach increasingly possible. Among those cited in the article are Accion CEO Michael Schlein, Access Bank’s Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede and Citigroup’s Bob Annibale through comments they delivered at the FI2020 Global Forum, and CFI, specifically our Mapping the Invisible Market research. To read the article, click here.

¿Qué es la inclusión financiera? ¿Cuentas bancarias a bajo costo? ¿Dinero móvil? ¿Microcrédito? Its counterpart English-language video released a few months ago, this short, animated, Spanish-language video illustrates how financial inclusion can improve lives through the eyes of Constanza, a fictional prospective client. To watch the video, click here.

Can the world achieve global financial inclusion by 2020? Throughout 2013 the many participants in FI2020 came together in asking this question to build a shared vision for the future of financial inclusion and develop a common roadmap guiding how to achieve it. In the newly-released report Seizing the Moment: On the Road to Financial Inclusion, with the insights from this collaboration, we look at what financial inclusion is, why it matters, and why we’re confident it can be achieved in the foreseeable future. To download the report, click here.

Although the Financial Inclusion 2020 Global Forum has wrapped, stay tuned as we continue to share content from and inspired by our time in London. On the CFI Blog you can find coverage that was posted during the Forum, in the time since the event, and still there are more FI2020 posts to come. On the Financial Inclusion 2020 site is a live stream of FI2020 social media, video recordings of sessions, and photos captured amist all the happenings.

A new report from the Smart Campaign, Study of Client Protection Practices in Latin America and the Caribbean, examines the client protection practices of twelve Latin American microfinance institutions. The institutions, which include NGOs, banks, and credit unions, were studied over the past two years. The report is intended to help microfinance stakeholders reflect on the current state of practice among institutions in LAC. To download the report, available in English and Spanish, click here