PRESS RELEASE
Monday 28th September 2015
New website provides knowledge hub for financial inclusion in Kenya today
Ever wondered what percentage of M-PESA users are female? Are mortgage interest rates in Kenya too high? Why don’t more Kenyans use debit cards? How many income streams does the average Kenyan juggle? Find the answers to these questions and more with a new online resource, designed to highlight and provides free access to knowledge, insights and data on financial inclusion in Kenya.
FSD Kenya designed its new website, www.fsdkenya.org, to become the premier online resource for insights and data on financial inclusion and financial sector development in the country. The website went live on Monday 28th September, 2015.
Kenya has been at the forefront of East Africa’s digital financial revolution. The rate of change continues apace – but there is still a long way to go. There remains a disconnect between how poor people see and manage their finances, and the offerings of financial institutions. Knowing and understanding more about the financial lives of the poor is at the heart of policy makers and financial service providers’ ability to change that.
“People need solutions to real world problems – juggling competing financial demands, managing challenges and opportunities, and navigating risks and uncertainty. Only once we understand the financial lives of the poor, can we start trying to create the tools they need,” said FSD Director, David Ferrand.
FSD Kenya is deeply committed to research and making high quality information on financial sector development and financial inclusion available, both to market players and to the public.
Part of the website, the Knowledge Hub, will provide access to data, knowledge and insights, in order to improve understanding of the sector, inform better-decision making and inspire ideas for a new generation of financial solutions and business models that reach the poor and support development.
A picture speaks a thousand words, and while economists love data, those at FSD recognize that one of the best ways to communicate data is through effective visualization. The website will thus offer a range of both interactive and static visualizations, to help audiences and make sense of and utilize the data.
It also provides a comprehensive catalogue of publications, market intelligence, surveys and other micro-data sources relating to financial inclusion and financial sector development in Kenya. Where possible, these will be available for download.
About FSD Kenya
FSD Kenya was created in 2005 to stimulate wealth creation and decrease poverty. It achieves this by working in partnership with the Government of Kenya, the financial services industry and business. An independent trust, supervised by KPMG, FSD Kenya (Financial Sector Deepening) is celebrating its tenth year of bringing financial services to an ever-increasing number of people and small businesses across Kenya.
Contacts
Joyce Omondi, Communications Manager, FSD Kenya | joyce.omondi@fsdkenya.org
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