Archive for: Credit Scoring

• New Report from Aite Group Considers Mobile Banking Models from Africa for the United States
• Uganda: Barclays Starts Mobile Banking
• Alternative Data and Its Use in Credit Scoring
• Right Regulation Will Help Mobile Financial Services
• Over 2 Trillion Text Messages Will Be Sent Worldwide and This Number Continues To Grow

It is nothing new that access to credit to small businesses and low-income individuals is limited in many developing countries. One of the many reasons, besides lack of collateral, informal economic activity, and physical distance to credit providers, is the lack of a formal credit history in a local credit bureau.

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That was fun. What did we learn? 

We reaffirmed that small, including micro, enterprises have proven themselves to be reliable and sustainable ways to help people out of poverty and that, in that context, we have abundant proof that microfinance is a workable idea.

MFIs, although having reached increasingly impressive numbers of people, must nonetheless recognize that more than two-thirds of the inhabitants of developing countries remain to be touched by the MFI mission of bringing the advantages of banking to the unbanked and under-banked.

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Happy Monday…this Monday is more auspicious than most because it’s the start of our three day conference looking at how technologies such as card-based networks and mobile phones could increase access to finance. IFC is a co-organizer, and Visa is a sponsor.

Want to know more? Visit here for the full agenda.

We’ll be posting presentations as we get them…and this link should take you to a live video stream of the event.

CGAP’s Technology Program is interested in technology solutions which deliver a wide range of financial services, including credit. In many of our projects, technology helps us to automate decision making and transfer transaction data over long distances. Making credit decisions remotely using a credit score application for people without credit history, and automating the disbursement of funds is still a challenge for many financial institutions. Therefore, the CGAP’s Technology Program seeks to experiment with ways on how to extend credit to very poor unbanked clients without involving a credit officer. Read the rest of this page »

Despite economic gains in recent years, Mexico’s financial services industry has yet to reach all potential customers. In cities, as little as 15 percent of the population have access to financial accounts. In rural areas, the percentage plummets to six percent. These figures are partially due to limited supply of services, especially in rural areas, as well as demand-side constraints such as low levels of education, and negative perceptions of banking in general. Read the rest of this page »

September 2004
Breaking Down the Walls between Microfinance and the Formal Financial System
(adapted from Elizabeth Littlefield and Richard Rosenberg, “Microfinance and the Poor: Breaking Down the Walls between Microfinance and Formal Finance,” Finance & Development 41, no. 2 (June 2004): 38-40)
There is a dawning understanding that developing countries’ financial systems need to be more accessible to poor people and that there are practical ways to make this happen. All kinds of financial institutions–regulators, mainstream rating agencies, commercial and state banks, insurance companies, and credit bureaus–are starting to play a part in developing sound, inclusive financial systems that serve the majority of poor countries citizens.

English pdf | French pdf | Spanish pdf | Russian pdf | Arabic pdf