Rafe Mazer was the speaker at the 2nd FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion. His presentation shared how we can develop our own “test and learn” – the way in which financial service providers and regulators collaborate to allow for new solutions – for consumer protection.

The research is based on a long-term series of five surveys undertaken on M-Pesa in Kenya supported by FSD Kenya and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Registration is open!

This year’s annual lecture will be delivered by Rafe Mazer, a Financial sector specialist at CGAP.

Join us for what we expect will be a stimulating discussion on competition and consumer protection in Kenya’s financial sector.

Policymakers, academics, industry players, donors and other stakeholders gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Thursday 8th December for the 2nd FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion.

Find out what percentage of adults are using a range of formal and informal financial services and products in Kenya, overall and for sub-groups of the population defined by age, gender, wealth, geographic location and education.

Which financial services are perceived to be the most important to Kenyans, and why? This interactive heat map draws from the 2016 FinAccess household survey and displays the percentage of people using a range of financial services

Who are the users of different financial products & services?

The telecom sector in Kenya has experienced phenomenal growth over the past decade. Mobile phone penetration has topped 90%, with 78% of Kenyan adults now owning a working mobile phone.

M-Shwari (meaning ‘calm’ in Kiswahili) is a combined savings and loans product launched through a collabo­ration between the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) and Safaricom.

One of the key reasons why banks are challenged in serving SMEs appropriately, is that they lack an understanding of the evolving needs of fast growing SMEs.

How exactly do financial services impact low income Kenyans? In this note, we extract the stories of eight respondent households from the Financial Diaries.

This is the second post in a three-post blog series introducing publications from our recently concluded Kenya Financial Diaries update study, conducted with BFA.

Self-employment is a major source of income for low income Kenyans, and Financial Diaries respondents are no exception. When we talked to respondents in 2015, two years after the close of the original Diaries, those whose economic lives were improving pointed to business returns as one of the main drivers of their success.

Our third “Field Friday” exercise reveals lessons for formal financial service providers to learn from informal services.

Over the next three weeks, we will be releasing three publications based on findings from the Kenya Financial Diaries Update, a follow up study with the Kenya Financial Diaries households.

In late 2015, we followed up with Financial Diaries households to check in on their economic lives two years after the initial Diaries study ended. We wanted to know how they are doing now, the factors driving changes in their economic lives, and the role that financial services and financial choices were playing in their economic trajectories.

How the use of non-financial services can help bankers deliver effective financing.

Poor communication between entrepreneurs and their bankers is often a stumbling block in the delivery of effective financing for enterprise growth throughout the world. The use of non-financial services (NFS) can help with this.

This report draws on Financial Diaries data from India, Kenya, and Mexico to enhance the field’s understanding of women’s financial lives, and to highlight provider-led opportunities to better serve this important market segment.

Can digital innovations replicate the “three-padlock” concept of the money box?

Financial institutions play a key role in enhancing trust in the financial system

David Ferrand, Director of FSD Kenya, was part of a distinguished panel disucssing the role of central banks in financial inclusion at the CBK@50 symposium in Nairobi.

Enthusiasm around the once-popular “Africa Rising” narrative is abating in the face of slower-than-expected growth, macro volatility deriving from continued reliance on raw material exports in many countries, and the reality of persistently high inequality.

23% of sub-Saharan Africans are living in “cusper” households that get by on $2-$5 per person per day. This map shows their total percentage per country (relative to the overall country population) and size in millions

Why residents of Kawangware welcome the interest rate cap

To increase access to finance in the agricultural sector, various players have implemented initiatives to help smallholder farmers and pastoralists to access financial solutions. The many initiatives over time have had varying degrees of success.

This toolkit has been designed to help you generate solutions in many different fields of interest, from agriculture, to manufacturing, to banking and new technology.