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This study investigates the role of information sharing offices and its association with market power in the African banking industry. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks from 42 countries for the period 2001-2011. Five simultaneity-robust estimation techniques are employed, namely: (i) Two Stage Least Squares; (ii) Instrumental Fixed effects to control for the unobserved heterogeneity; (iii) Instrumental Tobit regressions to control for the limited range in the dependent variable; (iv) Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) to control for persistence in market power and (v) Instrumental Quantile Regressions (QR) to account for initial levels of market power. The following findings have been established from non-interactive regressions. First, the effects of information sharing offices are significant in Two Stage Least Squares, with a positive effect from private credit bureaus. Second, in GMM, public credit registries increase market power. Third, from Quintile Regressions, private credit bureaus consistently increase market power throughout the conditional distributions of market power. Given that the above findings are contrary to theoretical postulations, we extended the analytical framework with interactive regressions in order to assess whether the anticipated effects can be established if information sharing offices are increased. The extended findings show a: (i) negative net effect from public credit registries on market power in GMM regressions and; (ii) negative net impacts from public credit registries on market power in the 0.25th and 0.50th quintiles of market power.

In Thailand, the government has long recognized the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the economy and has given a large amount of financial support to this sector. Still, SMEs are not able to catch up with larger enterprises and the constraints to SME financing remain the main topic of policy discussion today. Against this background, the important issue for Thailand may not be about the lack of financial assistance per se but about how to design an appropriate market-friendly business model and supporting scheme to help SMEs gain access to credit on a sustainable basis. Given the success of microfinance around the world, a large number of commercial banks have made a profitable business out of this sector. This paper explores various business models by commercial banks in microfinance and provides policy implications for Thailand. By making use of commercial banks' competitive advantage, Thailand can create a more market-friendly environment for SME financing. This will also ensure that lending to small-business clients is not a burden to the government and is self-sustaining in the long run.

This study assesses how information diffusion dampens the adverse effect of market power on the price and quantity of loans provided by a panel of 162 banks from 39 African countries for the period 2001-2011. The empirical evidence is based on three endogenity-robust estimation techniques, namely: (i) Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS), (ii) Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) and (iii) Instrumental Variable Quantile Regressions (QR). Three key results emerge. First, from the GMM results, a mobile phone penetration rate of 54.29, rising to 57 per 100 people are predicted to neutralise the adverse effect of market power on the average loan price and quantity respectively. Second, from the QR, mobile phone penetration rates of 56.20, 52.04 and 42.76 per 100 people is needed to nullify the negative effect of market power on loan quantity at the 0.10th, 0.25th and 0.90th quintiles respectively. Third, a considerably lower internet penetration rate of 9.49 per 100 people is required to counteract the negative impact of market power on loan quantity at the 0.90th quintile.

This study investigates the role of information sharing offices (public credit registries and private credit bureaus) in reducing market power for financial access in the African banking industry. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks from 42 countries for the period 2001-2011. Three simultaneity-robust empirical strategies are employed, namely: (i) Two Stage Least Squares with Fixed Effects in order to account for simultaneity and the observed heterogeneity; (ii) Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) to control for simultaneity and time-invariant omitted variables and (iii) Instrumental Variable Quantile regressions to account for simultaneity and initial levels of financial access. In order to ensure that information sharing offices influence market power for loan price (quantity) to decrease (increase), public credit registries should have between 3.156% and 3.3% coverage, while private credit bureaus should have between 1.443 and 18.4% coverage. The established thresholds are cut-off points at which information sharing offices completely neutralise the negative effect of market power on financial access. The thresholds are contingent on the dimension (loan price versus loan quantity) and distribution (conditional mean versus conditional distribution) of financial access.

We experimentally test the impact of expanding access to basic bank accounts in Uganda, Malawi, and Chile. Over two years, 17%, 10%, and 3% of treatment individuals made five or more deposits, respectively. Average monthly deposits for them were at the 79th, 91st, and 96th percentiles of baseline savings. Survey data show no clearly discernible intention-to-treat effects on savings or any downstream outcomes. This suggests that policies merely focused on expanding access to basic accounts are unlikely to improve welfare noticeably since impacts, even if present, are likely small and diverse.

This study investigates loan price and quantity effects of information sharing offices with ICT, in a panel of 162 banks consisting of 42 African countries for the period 2001-2011.The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments and Instrumental Quantile Regressions. Our findings broadly show that ICT with public credit registries decrease the price of loans and increase the quantity of loans. While the net effects from the interaction of ICT with private credit bureaus do not lead to enhanced financial access, corresponding marginal effects show that ICT can complement private credit bureaus to increase loan quantity and decrease loan prices when certain thresholds of ICT are attained. We compute and discuss the ICT thresholds that are required to make this possible.

Immigrants from countries with more effective institutions are more likely than other immigrants to have a relationship with a bank and to use formal financial markets more extensively. The evidence that a country's institutional environment shapes beliefs--and by extension the use of financial services--provides support for policies that focus on institutional reforms in promoting financial access. After holding wealth, education, and other factors constant, the impact of institutional quality in the country of origin affects the financial market participation of all immigrant groups except those who have lived in the United States for more than 28 years. These findings are robust to alternative measures of institutional effectiveness, to controlling for additional country of origin characteristics, and to various methods for addressing potential biases caused by immigrant self-selection. Copyright The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / the world bank . All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

While the microfinance sector is extensively used in Mali (about 1 million members often based in rural areas), the sector has experienced a major crisis for over six years. The clean-up of the microfinance remains the most pressing priority for the Malian authorities and the adoption of the emergency plan for the microfinance sector is a key milestone to cleaning up the sector. While the plan addresses the main issues (restructuring or liquidation not viable MFIs; depositors indemnization mechanism; consolidation of active MFIs; reform and strengthening of the national supervisory body), but the implementation remains very challenging in a context of fiscal tightening and donor’s reluctance to intervene. It is only the Government of Mali that can restore confidence in the sector, and only by undertaking the recommendations highlighted in the emergency plan. One of the most sensitive issues will be to manage the liquidation of a few important distressed institutions together with the indemnization of their depositors.

Using a new and representative data set of Chinese household finance, this paper documents household access to and costs of finance, along with their correlates. As in most developing countries, informal finance is a crucial element of household finance, and wealth tends to be associated with better access to formal and informal finance. Better financial knowledge shifts loan portfolios toward formal sources relative to informal ones. Connections to the Communist Party are associated with significantly better access to finance in rural areas but not in urban areas. A larger social network is positively associated with access to informal finance. Controlling for household characteristics, rural residents pay interest rates on loans similar to urban residents. Younger residents pay higher rates, while households on firmer economic footing face lower rates. Taking financial classes and college education is associated with higher interest rates for urban residents, suggesting perhaps that financial knowledge coincides with greater demand for credit in areas with more economic opportunity. Overall, the findings suggest that Chinese residents face dual credit markets, with the poor, young, those with poor financial knowledge, and those with larger family sizes relying much more on informal finance, while others are better able to access formal finance.

Growing research and policy interest focuses on the misallocation of output and factors of production in developing economies. This paper considers the possible misallocation of financial loans. Using plant-level data on the organized and unorganized sectors, the paper describes the temporal, geographic, and industry distributions of financial loans. The focus of the analysis is the hypothesis that land misallocation might be an important determinant of financial misallocation (for example, because of the role of land as collateral against loans). Using district-industry variations, the analysis finds evidence to support this hypothesis, although it does not find a total reduction in the intensity of financial loans or those being given to new entrants. The analysis also considers differences by gender of business owners and workers in firms. Although potential early gaps for businesses with substantial female employment have disappeared in the organized sector, a sizeable and persistent gap remains in the unorganized sector.

This report will share key findings from the research, starting with an overview in section two of the international remittance context and the UK remittance market. It also provides a view on trends in the UK market, particularly in the wake of significant bank de-risking, leading many remittance service providers (RSPs) to seek out alternative banking solutions. Section three outlines the objectives of the research, the survey design and the sampling techniques for the fieldwork. This is followed by Section 4, which presents the empirical findings of the 602 interviews collected. It begins with demographic and economic characteristics of the participants before focusing on migrants’ attitudes and behaviors regarding remittance sending, using financial services, and savings and investment. Given the current environment for remittance service providers in the UK (and in several other countries) and the global commitment to reducing remittance costs, there is a focus on the service providers used and the costs incurred. Finally, the report concludes with a summary of the main findings and provides recommendations on addressing the barriers and issues faced by migrants in London regarding financial and remittance services, as well as potential areas of further inquiry.

The empirical literature on institutions and development has been challenged on grounds of reverse causality, measurement error in institutional indicators, and heterogeneity. This paper uses firm-level data across countries to confront these challenges. Instead of analyzing ultimate outcomes, such as income levels where institutional quality is likely endogenous, the focus is on firm-level external finance. Moreover, institutions are “unbundled” to explore how various types of institutions affect external finance differently. The paper documents that micro firms have significantly less access to external finance than small and medium firms. General financial development and contracting institutions that facilitate transactions between private parties exert little effect, on average, on firms’ access to external finance. In contrast, property rights institutions that constrain political and economic elites exhibit stronger positive association with access to external finance. The analysis finds evidence of attenuation bias associated with error in measuring institutions. For leveling the playing field between elite and non-elite firms (as proxied by firm size) in their access to external finance, property rights institutions also figure more prominently—with an important exception for the information environment, a component of contracting institutions. The results indicate that a specific channel through which development is affected more by property rights institutions rather than contracting institutions is external financing for firms.

Jamaica has experienced 30 years of low economic growth and high fiscal deficits, with a significant impact on the development of the financial sector. As part of the overall growth and competitiveness reform agenda, the authorities have embarked on ambitious financial sector legislation reforms to address weaknesses. Lack of access to credit and equity constrain Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (MSME) operations and growth, and ultimately their contribution to the economy. High interest rates and low penetration of credit to households and MSMEs can be explained by high credit risk as a result of high information asymmetries in the market, as well as limited competition in the banking sector. The authorities should complete the establishment of a regulatory and supervisory framework for deposit-taking institutions proportionate to the risks and the activities they undertake. The impact of public policies has been limited and programs on housing, MSME finance, and agriculture finance would be welcomed to address market gaps, in support of financial inclusion. The financial inclusion agenda also requires a comprehensive strategy on consumer protection regulation and supervision.

The Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database, launched by the World Bank in 2011, provides comparable indicators showing how people around the world save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The 2014 edition of the database reveals that 62 percent of adults worldwide have an account at a bank or another type of financial institution or with a mobile money provider. Between 2011 and 2014, 700 million adults became account holders while the number of those without an account—the unbanked—dropped by 20 percent to 2 billion. What drove this increase in account ownership? A growth in account penetration of 13 percentage points in developing economies and innovations in technology—particularly mobile money, which is helping to rapidly expand access to financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa. Along with these gains, the data also show that big opportunities remain to increase financial inclusion, especially among women and poor people. Governments and the private sector can play a pivotal role by shifting the payment of wages and government transfers from cash into accounts. There are also large opportunities to spur greater use of accounts, allowing those who already have one to benefit more fully from financial inclusion. In developing economies 1.3 billion adults with an account pay utility bills in cash, and more than half a billion pay school fees in cash. Digitizing payments like these would enable account holders to make the payments in a way that is easier, more affordable, and more secure.

Financial infrastructure is the underlying foundation of a country’s financial system. It is comprised of all institutions, information, technologies, rules, and standards which enable financial intermediation. The quality of a country’s financial infrastructure determines the efficiency of intermediation, the ability of lenders to evaluate risk and of borrowers to obtain credit, insurance, and other financial products at competitive terms. This report covers two dimensions of Jamaica’s financial infrastructure: 1) payments, remittances, and securities settlement systems, and; 2) credit reporting systems. This technical note does not provide a detailed assessment of individual payments system in the form of a Report on Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC), but uses the framework of international standards for carrying out a detailed analysis of the existing systems in Jamaica, including the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) and International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) Principles for Financial Markets Infrastructure (PFMIs), the CPSS General Guidance for National Payment System Development, the CPSS-World Bank General Principles on International Remittance Services (GPs), the World Bank General Principles for credit reporting and related methodologies. The information used in the assessment includes relevant national laws, regulations, rules and procedures governing the systems and other available material.

The poor and other underserved populations in developing countries have unique financial service s needs. However, there is often a mismatch between what financial institutions offer and what underserved populations need or want. This product gap may reflect a lack of interest by financial institutions in designing more target products, or a lack of willingness or capacity on the part of financial institutions to design, market and implement tailor-made financial products. The objectives of the Product Design Case Studies are to 1) develop expertise related to product design and innovation processes through a better understanding of best practices in the field, in depth research and application of behavioral economics concepts; 2) increase awareness of product design/innovation and the links between product development and financial inclusion; and 3) generate publicity and knowledge sharing around product design and innovation. While the hand loan product was broadly successful in achieving its original intent, the pilot encountered considerable institutional and execution challenges that are instructive for future product innovation efforts. The first two sections describe the problem and the innovative product designed to address it. The next section describes the final design and implementation of the product in detail. The fourth section covers post-pilot data collection and results. The final sections discuss lessons learned and planned future enhancements.

Economists have long known that financial services have benefits for users by allowing them to smooth consumption, save for bulky purchases, etc. But the recognition of their importance even for people with relatively low incomes those earning one to two dollars a day, for instance is relatively recent. This recognition has been spurred by a better understanding of the financial lives of the poor, and of the critical role played by uncertainty and volatility. The objective of this case study is to describe the design and implementation of WING, a Cambodian mobile-phone-based payment system. The product has been successful in providing access to formal banking to the previously unbanked in Cambodia. The following sections present the problem of financial exclusion, how WING meets this problem by providing a mobile banking network, the unique aspects of WING s design compared to other products, challenges in achieving technology adoption and other constraints faced by the product, and how WING has responded to these challenges throughout implementation. Finally, the case study presents lessons learned and behavioral applications for future products.

Malawi s economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, especially tobacco, which comprises a majority of the country s exports. Tobacco farmers have one harvest a year, and while their income stream occurs over several months it must last them for the entire year, making it difficult to smooth consumption throughout the year. The objective of this case study is to present the design and implementation of a commitment savings product for groups of tobacco farmers in Malawi. The product was successful in encouraging savings, increasing input purchases and yields for the next year s harvest, and increasing consumption after the harvest. The following sections describe the lack of formal savings options for rural farmers, the behavioral concept behind commitment savings accounts, the product designed to address these problems and subsequent changes to the original design, results of a field experiment evaluating the product, and lessons learned for other commitment savings products.

The purpose of the paper is to present a more granular view of such projects through the in-depth focus on a limited number of case studies, with a view to understanding what factors in the design of such lending have helped achieve objectives of expanded access, and what forms of interventions may have been less successful. It examines the nature of Bank lending vehicles, the partnering borrower institutions, the country environments in which its loans were extended, as well as broader elements of good practice that make for loan success. It examines the beneficiaries targeted and results achieved. It aims to draws lessons that suggest what factors could lead to success or failure in Bank operations focused on financial access. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: section two briefly describes the set of the Bank s projects selected for detailed review. Sections three to six contain the core findings of the review. Section 3 focuses on alternative forms of borrower institutions that have served as vehicles for Bank projects, particularly, public sector banks, apex bank structures that include the private sector, rural banks, nonbanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and microfinance institutions, in terms of the degree to which the Bank has been able to successfully partner with such institutions to expand financial access. It also looks at alternative forms of Bank loan design, policy-based loans, investment loans and lines of credit, Learning and Innovation Loans (LILs), matching grants, technical assistance and combinations thereof, and reviews evidence on the role of loan structure (including partnerships with other donors/lenders) and project success. Section four considers the effect of the broader business environment, in terms of financial regulation. Section five reviews elements of good practice that have contributed to success in lending that could be applicable to loans with any objective, and examines their application in the present context. Section six tries to construct a bottom line, reviewing available evidence on outcomes and impact; especially in terms of the ultimate beneficiaries reached. Section seven, the final section, summarizes the main messages emerging from the review and concludes with observations about ways forward.

This paper attempts to study financial access of unorganized manufacturing enterprises in India given their importance to the economy and the fact that finance has been the main constraint on their growth. We approach financial access from the macroeconomic growth perspective and hence focus on the availability of financial resources for the purpose of productive investment. Financial access is analysed at two distinct levels: 1) enterprises availing loan from the formal financial system; and 2) adequacy of loan from the formal financial sources in taking care of productive investment undertaken. The latter is measured as financial resource gap i.e. the proportion of productive investment not financed by the formal financial sources. Firm-level characteristics such as scale of operation, technology, performance, owned assets, ownership, education of owner, enterprise type, maintenance of accounts records and registration with government agencies, are considered as possible factors influencing financial access of enterprises. With the help of NSS unit level data and using Probit and Tobit, the results suggest that the unorganized manufacturing enterprises have limited financial access and large financial resource gap. Scale of operation, proportion of owned assets, enterprise type and ownership type, maintenance of accounts and registration with the government agencies found to have significant impact on the financial access of enterprises. Regarding financial resource gap, scale of operation, capital intensity, proportion of owned assets, education, maintenance of accounts and registration with government agencies turned out to be statistically significant factors.

Despite regulatory efforts designed to make it easier for firms to formalize, informality remains extremely high among firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. In most of the region, business registration in a national registry is separate from tax registration. This paper provides initial results from an experiment in Malawi that randomly allocated firms into a control group and three treatment groups: a) a group offered assistance for costless business registration; b) a group offered assistance with costless business registration and (separate) tax registration; and c) a group offered assistance for costless business registration along with an information session at a bank that ended with the offer of business bank accounts. The study finds that all three treatments had extremely large impacts on business registration, with 75 percent of those offered assistance receiving a business registration certificate. The findings offer a cost-effective way of getting firms to formalize in this dimension. However, in common with other studies, information and assistance has a limited impact on tax registration. The paper measures the short-term impacts of formalization on financial access and usage. Business registration alone has no impact for either men or women on bank account usage, savings, or credit. However, the combination of formalization assistance and the bank information session results in significant impacts on having a business bank account, financial practices, savings, and use of complementary financial products.

This paper examines the effect of finance on long-term economic growth using Bayesian model averaging to address model uncertainty in cross-country growth regressions. The literature largely focuses on financial indicators that assess the financial depth of banks and stock markets. These indicators are examined jointly with newly developed indicators that assess the stability and efficiency of financial markets. Once the finance-growth regressions are subjected to model uncertainty,the results suggest that commonly used indicators of financial development are not robustly related to long-term growth. However, the findings from the global sample indicate that one newly developed indicator -- the efficiency of financial intermediaries -- is robustly related to long-term growth.

In Kenya agriculture contributes 24% to the GDP yet lending to the sector is only about 4%. A major constraint to increasing efficiency in smallholder enterprises in rural areas is therefore, limited access to financial services. Lack of working capital for traders in rural areas inhibits the purchase, trade and processing of agricultural produce. This limits the amount of produce a farmer can market and acts as a disincentive to reaching his/her productive potential. Furthermore, most Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) lack a value chain approach to financing and are unable to remove the financial constraints along a specific value chain. Appropriate financing services along the value chain can help to enhance the productivity and profitability of various small-scale rural stakeholders. Therefore, the study assessed the prospects for financial innovations and access in improving dairy farmers’ livelihoods through a case study approach. The findings provide a strong evidence that appropriate financial innovation is the missing link in agricultural productivity paradigm and the food security equation in African countries including Kenya.

We analyze linked databases on all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, on all SBA lenders, and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Our methods combine regressions with matching on firm age, size, industry, year, and employment history, and with instrumental variables capturing ease of access to SBA lenders. The estimation results imply an increase of 3-4 jobs for each million dollars of loans, suggesting that credit constraints impede small business growth prior to loan receipt. We also investigate the variation in estimated employment effects for the SBA 504 versus 7(a) programs, and with respect to the business cycle, local credit conditions, and within-county versus non-SBA county-industry control firms. Finally, for loans issued over the 1992-2007 period, we estimate total job creation of 1.0-2.1 million and the government's cost per job of $8,200-$18,000 measured five years after the loan year.

Evidence on the effectiveness of financial education and formal savings account access is lacking, particularly for youth. We randomly assign 250 youth clubs to receive either financial education, access to a cheap group account, or both. The financial education treatments increase financial literacy; the account-only treatment does not. Administrative data shows the education plus account treatment increases bank savings relative to account-only. But survey-measured total savings shows roughly equal increases across all treatment arms. Earned income also increases in all treatment arms. We find little evidence that education and account access are strong complements, and some evidence they are substitutes.

The poor often save through informal methods outside of the financial systems of developing countries, restricting the extent to which their savings can help fuel growth. Moreover, a growing number of studies show large positive effects on outcomes among the poor from possessing a savings account. However, the vast majority of adults in the developing world do not have even a basic account. This paper uses a randomized field experiment in Malawi with over 2,000 households to examine an innovative approach to spur financial inclusion. The results show that periodic informational visits to a village can sharply increase take-up and use of savings accounts. The impact on adoption probability depends on a few key household characteristics, its effect the strongest for households in middle wealth categories, with educated heads, living outside the immediate vicinity of the bank. Results show account usage is robust among induced adopters. The randomly assigned information intervention is then used to identify sharp causal impacts of savings adoption on agricultural production inputs, crop income, and food consumption among farming households in poor rural areas. These results help extend a fast-growing literature on formal savings by examining a novel and effective method to encourage uptake and better understand the impact of savings accounts among poor farmers – the largest occupational group among the poor., Work in progress, results are preliminary. Please ask permission before citing., Replaced with updated version October 14, 2016.

Evidence on the effectiveness of financial education and formal savings account access is lacking, particularly for youth. We randomly assign 250 youth clubs to receive either financial education, access to a cheap group account, or both. The financial education treatments increase financial literacy; the account-only treatment does not. Administrative data shows the education plus account treatment increases bank savings relative to account-only. But survey-measured total savings shows roughly equal increases across all treatment arms. Earned income also increases in all treatment arms. We find little evidence that education and account access are strong complements, and some evidence they are substitutes.

A large literature has studied how peers affect behavior by exploiting the preexisting social network structure only. What if networks rewire in response to changes in the economic environment, such as a randomized intervention? We exploit a unique panel dataset that contains detailed information on the network of informal financial transactions before and after a field experiment that randomized access to savings accounts in Nepal. First, we show that the intervention affects the structure of the network of informal financial transactions among households. Second, we estimate a panel model of peer effects in expenditure where the network may change endogenously, and we exploit the design of the randomized intervention to instrument for the observed network change. Our results suggest that disregarding the network change would underestimate both total peer effects and the overall impact of the intervention.

Evidence on the effectiveness of financial education and formal savings account access is lacking, particularly for youth. We randomly assign 250 youth clubs to receive either financial education, access to a cheap group account, or both. The financial education treatments increase financial literacy; the account-only treatment does not. Administrative data shows the education plus account treatment increases bank savings relative to account-only. But survey-measured total savings shows roughly equal increases across all treatment arms. Earned income also increases in all treatment arms. We find little evidence that education and account access are strong complements, and some evidence they are substitutes.

This paper examines the current status and trends of the banking system of Uzbekistan, assesses the development potential of commercial banks and provides scientific and practical implications for improving the balance and stability of banking system of Uzbekistan based on the qualitative and quantitative analyses and the identified problems.

This update considers new findings since the initial Stocktaking report, substantiating the contribution of the private sector, and of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in particular, for new jobs and investment. These findings further illustrate the key role access to finance plays in SMEs abilities and willingness to add jobs including the special circumstances of fast-growing SMEs, or gazelles. The new findings further detail availability and gaps in SME financing, including for specific subsectors such as women-owned firms and agri-enterprises. New trends include progress made in recent years to improve financial markets infrastructure, and expanded lending in countries such as China, which have made progress in this area. The findings also include key private sector innovations pioneered by the SME Finance Challenge winners and other private sector institutions, focusing on key sector opportunities (such as agribusiness and energy), product innovation (such as expanded local currency options), and risk management alternatives. The new findings and trends highlight the potential of collaborative platforms that have emerged from the G-20/GPFI (Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion) process to combine resources to improve SME access to finance, and some of the major outstanding issues and obstacles these platforms might address. The conclusion provides recommendations for priority issues and work areas for G-20/GPFI attention.

Colombian authorities have made financial inclusion a core element of the country's socioeconomic development. The Central Bank of Colombia (BRC) requested support from the World Bank to develop and execute a nationally representative survey on financial capability. This report covers the first nationally representative study to detail the financial behavior, attitudes, and knowledge that comprise financial capability. One complementary national study is the annual Household Financial Burden and Education Survey (IEFIC) jointly undertaken by the BRC and the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE). This report provides insights on consumer behavior, attitudes, and knowledge relevant to initiatives promoting financial education and financial inclusion. Preliminary insights from this study have been used in developing the National Strategy on Social and Economic Policy (CONPES) document outlining the strategy for financial education in Colombia. There is an ongoing debate over measures that will codify a national financial education strategy into law. This report has following four objectives: (i) to provide empirical evidence on the financial behavior, attitudes, and knowledge of the Colombian population; (ii) to support the design of public policies to enhance both knowledge about and the quality of financial services; (iii) to highlight vulnerabilities and gaps in particular segments of the population with the goal of improving and focusing public policies and interventions where they are most needed; and (iv) to provide a basis for international comparison with other countries for which these data are available. This report describes a baseline measure of the financial capability of the Colombian adult population and highlights key results from the first national survey. This report is organized as follows: chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two describes key findings related to daily money management and financial planning behaviors and attitudes. Chapter three examines decisions related to the use of financial products and level of financial knowledge. Chapter four summarizes key behaviors and attitudes into financial capability scores, facilitating the creation of profiles and comparisons among different segments of the population. Chapter five presents international comparisons. Chapter six examines the relationship between financial capability, financial knowledge, and financial inclusion. Chapter seven provides policy recommendations related to the key challenges to financial capability identified in the report.

Background: A paradigm shift in global health policy on user fees has been evident in the last decade with a growing consensus that user fees undermine equitable access to essential health care in many low and middle income countries. Changes to fees have major implications for human resources for health (HRH), though the linkages are rarely explicitly examined. This study aimed to examine the inter-linkages in Zimbabwe in order to generate lessons for HRH and fee policies, with particular respect to reproductive, maternal and newborn health (RMNH). Methods: The study used secondary data and small-scale qualitative fieldwork (key informant interview and focus group discussions) at national level and in one district in 2011. Results: The past decades have seen a shift in the burden of payments onto households. Implementation of the complex rules on exemptions is patchy and confused. RMNH services are seen as hard for families to afford, even in the absence of complications. Human resources are constrained in managing current demand and any growth in demand by high external and internal migration, and low remuneration, amongst other factors. We find that nurses and midwives are evenly distributed across the country (at least in the public sector), though doctors are not. This means that for four provinces, there are not enough doctors to provide more complex care, and only three provinces could provide cover in the event of all deliveries taking place in facilities. Conclusions: This analysis suggests that there is a strong case for reducing the financial burden on clients of RMNH services and also a pressing need to improve the terms and conditions of key health staff. Numbers need to grow, and distribution is also a challenge, suggesting the need for differentiated policies in relation to rural areas, especially for doctors and specialists. The management of user fees should also be reviewed, particularly for non-Ministry facilities, which do not retain their revenues, and receive limited investment in return from the municipalities and district councils. Overall public investment in health needs to grow.

International audience; Financial sector development is increasingly recognised as critically important to the micro-foundations of wealth creation and economic development of nations. An increasingly relevant component in this relationship relates to the issue of financial access. This paper contributes to the growing debate on the relationship between financial development indicators and output growth by investigating the long run relationship between financial depth, financial access and economic growth in Nigeria. The research question is: how growth propelling is an inclusive financial system in Nigeria? This question is of significant policy relevance, as Nigeria recently launched a financial inclusion programme as a strategy for wealth creation and poverty alleviation for her citizens. By setting up an error correction model, this paper showed that increased financial depth (measured either as ratio of broad money supply to output or as ratio of credit to private sector to output) propelled output growth in Nigeria during 1975-2012. However, population per bank branch conferred significant negative effect on economic growth, implying that financial access matters for growth in Nigeria. Therefore, the study strongly endorses the current financial inclusion programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria as a way of promoting growth in the country. Also, the authors call for the inclusion of financial access questions in the General Household Survey (GHS) questionnaire of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as a way forward. This is based on the author's belief that the first step to improving financial access is measuring it. It is hoped that this effort would trigger further analysis that will help policy makers identify the real constraints to financial access in Nigeria.

European Commission This chapter highlights the growing global and European financial inclusion agenda and provides a brief assessment of vulnerability and labor market outcomes for Roma in Eastern Europe. Financial inclusion is considered by many to be among the main instruments to improve welfare, especially among the poor, which need financial services as much as, if not more, than non-poor, to reduce vulnerability and improve self-employment. Following a brief description of the main data sources used in the analysis, the chapter highlights the very high levels of vulnerability and exclusion among Roma in Eastern Europe and the poor labor market outcomes by any measure, including extremely low employment rates and high informality. Against this background, the following chapters assess financial exclusion among Roma, and self-employment levels and (credit) barriers to starting businesses. The final chapter highlights international experiences promoting comprehensive, incremental approaches to financial inclusion.

How we think about poverty is colored by how we measure it. For economists, that often means seeing poverty through quantities measured in large, representative surveys. The surveys give a comprehensive view, but favor breadth over depth. Typical economic surveys are limited in their ability to tease out informal activity, and, while they capture yearly sums, they offer little about how the year was actually lived by families. Year-long financial diaries provide a complementary way of seeing poverty, with a focus on week by week choices and challenges. The result is a re-framing of poverty and its relationship to money, calling for greater attention to financial access and a broader notion of how finance matters.

Mongolia's economy has embarked on a very high, long-term growth trajectory. To realize fully its economic potential, Mongolia needs to build a diversified, efficient and stable financial system, capable of intermediating both on a large scale and in specific market segments. Access to financial services in Mongolia is relatively high when measured by the demographic penetration of branches. The aim of this technical note is to assess the level of access to finance in Mongolia, and especially for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), to identify key obstacles to improving access, and to provide recommendations to overcome these obstacles. The technical note is organized as follows. Section one provides a broad overview of the macroeconomic environment and is followed by section two on the status of access to finance in Mongolia. Section three discusses products and market segments. Section four examines the supply of financial services by analyzing the role of key market players. Section five examines the demand for financial services by drawing on enterprise surveys to assess firms perceptions of their access to finance, and analyzes financing conditions for MSMEs. Section six examines obstacles in the regulatory, supervisory framework, and financial infrastructure for access to finance. Section seven describes the main government programs related to access to finance. In conclusion, section eight provides policy recommendations for overcoming obstacles to enhancing access to finance.

Financial consumer protection sets clear rules of conduct for financial firms regarding their retail customers. It aims to ensure that consumers: 1) receive information to allow them to make informed decisions, 2) are not subject to unfair or deceptive practices, and 3) have access to recourse mechanisms to resolve disputes. Complementary financial literacy initiatives are aimed at giving consumers the knowledge and skills to understand the risks and rewards of using financial products and services-and their legal rights and obligations in using them. Clear rules of conduct for financial institutions, combined with programs of financial education for consumers, will increase consumer trust in financial markets and will support the development of these markets. International and regional non-government organizations are also playing an increasingly important role in financial consumer protection. The responsible finance forum lists financial consumer protection regulation and financial capability as two of the three pillars of the framework for responsible finance. This summary is not exhaustive but helps illustrate the many ongoing international initiatives that support financial consumer protection. All the initiatives are helpful in strengthening the global response to weaknesses in financial consumer protection. Nevertheless, still more could be done by civil society organizations, particularly those operating at a global level. The World Bank is also supporting the international dialogue on financial consumer protection through development of good practices based on country-level experience and ongoing technical assistance. The good practices provide a comprehensive diagnostic tool to help identify the consumer protection issues in all parts of the financial sector.

With extensive country- and firm-level data sets we first document that the financial sectors of most sub-Saharan African countries remain significantly underdeveloped by the standards of other developing countries. We also find that population density appears to be considerably more important for banking sector development in Africa than elsewhere. To better understand how countries can overcome the high costs of developing viable banking sectors outside large metropolitan areas, we focus on Kenya, which has made significant strides in financial inclusion and development in recent years. We find a positive and significant impact of Equity Bank, a leading private commercial bank on financial access, especially for under-privileged households. Equity Bank’s business model—providing financial services to population segments typically ignored by traditional commercial banks and generating sustainable profits in the process—can be a potential solution to the financial access problem that has hindered the development of inclusive financial sectors in many other African countries.

The Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has brought to the forefront key challenges: the need to create job opportunities, equal access, a level playing field, transparency and accountability, and a fair and competitive environment. Crony capitalism, the privileged access of certain elites to favorable legal and regulatory treatment, access to markets, and the coincidence of political and economic power, was a major concern contributing to the uprising. Many saw privilege and corruption as the source of unemployment and inequality, effectively raising barriers to entry and growth for the majority of entrepreneurs. At the same time, practices such as connected lending and preferential land allocations, contributed to poor performance of key institutions, underpinning the market economy. It is critical for the MENA countries to achieve the aspirations of their people and attain sustainable and inclusive development by expanding private-led employment and creating entrepreneurship opportunities. This report assesses the supply and demand of financial services to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the MENA region, as well as the regulatory, institutional and policy environment that determines the cost, risk, and scale of SME finance. Emerging and promising SME finance models for banks, investors, government and regulators are outlined. These could significantly improve the outreach, viability, risk management, and development impacts of SME finance in the MENA region. SMEs need access to longer term credit products and equity, in addition to working capital loans and trade finance. They also need payment and card services, deposit facilities, liquidity management, risk management tools and insurance. The principal role of the state is as an enabler and regulator, providing the financial infrastructure, and legal and policy frameworks that financial institutions need to be able to meet the range of SME financial needs profitably. All this will contribute to attaining a more sustainable and inclusive system that can play a more important role in economic growth, and the regions prosperity.

In policy discussions, it has frequently been claimed that migrants’ remittances could function as a ‘catalyst’ for financial access among receiving households. This paper provides empirical evidence on this hypothesis from Mexico, a major receiver of remittances worldwide. Using the Mexican Family Life Survey panel (MxFLS) for 2002 and 2005, the results from the fixed effects logit model show that receiving remittances is strongly correlated with the ownership of savings accounts and, to some degree, with the availability of borrowing options. These effects are more important for rural households than for urban households and are more important for microfinance institutions, than for traditional banks.

This study uses data from the 2006 and 2009 national financial access (FinAccess) surveys to examine factors influencing financial service choices that households make. The findings indicate that households? access to financial services is based on levels of education, access to a saving facility, availability of M-Pesa services, age, group affiliations and wealth. The study further indicates that about a third of the adult population does not use any form of financial services available. Based on the results, the study recommends innovative marketing strategies aimed at expanding the use of mobile phones, which are valuable beyond the voice service and recoup costs from their increased usage; increased investment in financial education; and better designed financial products by the private sector appropriate for the unbanked majority.

This report outlines these findings, including damage and loss estimates and social and economic impacts, and proposes strategies for resilient recovery and reconstruction planning. Heavy rain combined with multiple tropical storms throughout the extended rainy season played a large part in the extensive flooding. Flash floods were reported in several areas in the north in May, and tropical depression Haima arrived in June followed by Nock-Ten in July, the combination of which caused widespread flooding. Overall, the floods affected more than 13 million people and resulted in more than 680 deaths. The floods impacted heavily on the private sector, particularly manufacturing. Manufacturing makes up about 38.5 percent of Thailand's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is one of the main drivers of Thailand's exports. The majority of manufacturers are located in five flood-affected provinces, namely Bangkok, Ayuthaya, Nakhon Sawan, Pathum Thani, and Samut Sakhon. Tourism, housing and the financial sector were also heavily affected. Though there was some damage to tourism infrastructure, the greatest impact came from losses in revenue from accommodation, transportation, shopping, food and beverages, entertainment and sightseeing. Recovery and reconstruction needs are estimated to be THB 1.5 trillion (USD 50 billion) over a five-year period.

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development and introduces four symposium articles. A common thread is that information asymmetries are important determinants of access to finance in young entrepreneurial firms. Policy recommendations are proposed that would increase the positive role of entrepreneurship in economic development.

The group of 20 (G-20) recognizes data and measurement as an essential foundation for advancing financial inclusion at a global level. The data and measurement sub-group, in its first year, was tasked to identify the existing financial inclusion data landscape, to assess the data gaps, to develop key performance indicators, and to lay out the foundations for the framing of financial inclusion target setting approaches. The purpose of this report, prepared for the global partnership for financial inclusion (GPFI), is to highlight the key findings and recommendations of the data and measurement sub-group during its first year, provide input for a roadmap for the GPFI's work plan for the coming year, and to present key policy recommendations for consideration by the G-20 policy makers for the Cannes summit in November 2011. The policy recommendations presented are relevant at the global level, including both G-20 and non-G-20 countries. The GPFI holds the potential for impact on two levels: (i) incorporating guidance on measurement frameworks and prioritizations of targets through GPFI country-level pilots; and (ii) aligning on the roadmap and determining a toolkit for formulating country level targets or goals to help - operationalize GPFI's universal access vision.