Commercial Relationships between Savings Groups and Financial Service Providers
Considerations in Developing a Business Model for Linkages
SEEP, Itad, Mastercard Foundation, and UNCDF

Relations between Savings Groups (SGs) and Financial Service Providers (FSPs) have received both a great deal of attention and considerable funding. In recent years, governments, donors, civil society organizations, and businesses have recognized the critical role that access to financial services can play in the fight against poverty. Despite the high-level of attention financial inclusion has commanded, the barriers to progress are numerous. Most impoverished households have neither the assets nor the skills necessary to interact with formal institutions. This report focuses on addressing these challenges and presenting opportunities for FSPs in working with SGs.

Read the full report here.

Artificial Intelligence: Practical Superpowers
The Case for AI in Financial Services in Africa
FIBR, MasterCard Foundation, BFA

While admittedly often overshadowed by hype, Artificial Intelligence (AI) today offers real opportunities for financial sector players to access new and augmented business abilities. Wielded well, AI can unlock data to reveal insights about customers, operations and businesses to inform key decisions. Sensors in smartphones also open up a whole new world of data as captured through images, text, sound and location, which AI can translate into information in real-time and with high fidelity. These kinds of advancements in the field are especially exciting for financial sector players in Africa, with real-use applications in the informal retail sector, and for businesses that rely on last-mile distribution networks, such as pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) providers,1 to reach their customers. Grounded in creating a practical and compelling case for financial services providers (FSPs) in Africa, we present an overview of AI and its benefits to businesses -- lowering costs, increasing revenue and competing in a changing market -- that could ultimately enable a more customer-centric financial ecosystem.

Read the full report here.

Impact Investments by Foundations in Singapore and Hong Kong
Pauline Tan, Swee-Sum Lam
The Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy (ACSEP) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School and Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) 

The study reviews the current state of impact investments in Singapore and Hong Kong, particularly those that have engaged with foundations. It further looks at the trends and challenges of the impact investment sector before presenting a list of recommendations.

Impact investment assets globally represent a mere 0.2 percent of global wealth as reported by the Global Impact Investing Network. By increasing this share to just two percent, the potential of impact investments can reach over US$2 trillion (UNDP, 2016). Impact investments can play a significant role in sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region, potentially providing socio- economic progress for the billions of people living in the region. Foundations in the region can potentially play a significant role given the billions of assets they can deploy. 

Read the full report here. 

Acceleration in Mexico: Early Impacts on Mexican Ventures
GALI

With the support of Citibanamex Compromiso Social, GALI is working to increase understanding of acceleration and early-stage ventures in Mexico. This report includes application and follow-up information from 318 ventures operating in Mexico, contributed by 15 accelerator programs.

Data at a Glance:

• Ventures that participated in accelerator programs experienced greater growth in revenues, full-time employees, equity, and debt on average compared to rejected ventures.
• The majority of ventures reported no equity or debt growth at all, suggesting that a small number of strong performers are drawing up the average changes in equity and debt.
• The impact of participation is meaningful for ventures with no prior-year investment; participating ventures increased equity three times more than rejected ventures, and debt five times more.
• First-time accelerated ventures reported higher average revenue growth, while ventures that had been previously accelerated reported greater equity growth.
• Invention-based ventures reported greater average equity growth, while non-invention-based reported higher revenue growth.

Read the full report here. 

Small and Growing Businesses in Africa: Profiles, Successes and Challenges
ADA – Appui au Développement Autonome

In Sub-Saharan Africa as elsewhere, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) play a crucial role in economic development and job creation. However, because of a general lack of knowledge about this particular segment, the sector hardly achieves its full potential. In order to better meet MSMEs’ needs, a first step consists in identifying the profiles, growth paths, success factors and challenges faced by those who managed to turn their microenterprises into small or medium entities, referred to as Small and Growing Business (SGB) owners.

As microenterprises are likely to resort to microfinance institutions to get access to financial services, ADA has coordinated a series of three studies relying on five MFIs in Ethiopia, Kenya and Madagascar in order to identify a sample of SGB owners and interview them individually to get details about their paths.

This study is the synthesis of these three surveys and specifically aims at providing detailed information about entrepreneurs’ profiles, about the main challenges and obstacles they faced through their growing process and about their current financial and non-financial needs. Based on such information, general recommendations are made to financial services providers and all kinds of organizations supporting MSMEs.

Read the full report here.