financial inclusion

More from the Series

Blog Post
The Clock is Ticking on Financial Inclusion and a Focus on Women Can Help
May 14, 2018
A sense of urgency was present at a recent World Bank Spring meeting on financial inclusion. This is not surprising, given the Bank’s ambitious goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020. Two years to go and globally about 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked—close to 1 billion of the...
Blog Post
How Illicit Finance Controls Can Make It Harder for Nonprofits to Serve the World’s Neediest —and What to Do about It
Jim Woodsome
and
March 05, 2018
A growing number of humanitarian aid organizations operating in conflict zones are  having trouble finding banks willing to work with them. We attended an international stakeholder dialogue on ensuring financial services for nonprofit organizations, and offer our preliminary thou...
Blog Post
Are Biometric ID Systems Good for Women?
February 26, 2018
Can biometric IDs encourage women’s financial inclusion and economic and social empowerment? In principle, the answer should be yes. But the potential impact is limited by a range of other impediments that limit women’s participation.
Blog Post
The Two Faces of Middle East Economies
February 07, 2018
Like the mythical Roman god Janus, there are two faces to most of the economies of the MENA region. We can call them the young and the old. And that the choice for MENA governments to make is not which face of Janus to support, but rather how to ensure that both can co-exist and prosper.  ...
Blog Post
Assessing the Quality of Regulations for Improving Financial Inclusion in Eight Latin American Countries
January 30, 2018
Many factors could be cited for the low ratios of financial inclusion in Latin America, but in a recent paper we focus on the potential role of financial regulation. We assessed and compared the quality of the policies and regulations that impinge on financial inclusion in eight Latin Amer...
Blog Post
If You’re Looking for Digital Opportunities in Davos, Here Are Some Big Ones
January 22, 2018
For the policymaker looking to improve services and the delivery of benefits, or for the financial institution trying to expand its customer base, the gap between technical solutions and the situation of the average technology user represents fertile ground for the many new opportunities that the di...
Blog Post
Questioning the Role of Bitcoin for Financial Inclusion
December 08, 2017
As the price of bitcoin continues its dizzying rise—the currency briefly surpassed $19,000 yesterday—the already passionate debate about its role in the global economy has become even more heated. Over the last two months, prominent economists and financiers, including Citi CEO&nbsp...