Financial Inclusion through Technology

Hosted by:

Allen & Overy

One Bishops Square

London, E1 6AD

with

Audrey Joubert, Advans International

Graham Wright, MSC

& Aurélie Wildt Dagneaux, PHB Development

Chaired by Sam Mendelson, e-MFP & Financial Inclusion Forum

Each year, the European Microfinance Platform (e-MFP) launches the European Microfinance Award, in conjunction with the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Inclusive Finance Network Luxembourg (InFiNe.lu). The Award invites applications from financial institutions that are innovating, exploring and testing new ideas that go beyond their core financial services and exemplify the evolution of the microfinance sector beyond boilerplate microenterprise credit.

In 2018 the 9^th Award was on Financial Inclusion through Technology, highlighting the role of technology in advancing financial inclusion, showing how technology-enabled services and solutions can help financial services providers such as microfinance institutions increase outreach to low-income and vulnerable segments, offering products and services capable of responding to clients’ needs for trust, speed, low cost, security, usability, and transparency.

Financial technology can reduce the costs of expensive, human-intensive ‘traditional’ microfinance, facilitate communication and exchange of information, improve the speed and reliability of financial services in remote areas, leverage new software, hardware and data sources and bring into the financial ecosystem particular segments – especially women, rural communities and the very poor – that brick-and-mortar microfinance models struggle to sustainably reach.

The Award was won by Advans Côte d'Ivoire (Advans CI) a NBFI in the Ivory Coast which has responded to traceability and safety issues faced by cooperatives paying cocoa farmers by offering its digital savings and payment solution, with wallet-to-bank and bank-to-wallet transfer services, enabling producers’ cooperatives to make digital payments to farmers for their crop revenue.

This event, jointly held by the Financial Inclusion Forum and e-MFP, and once again generously supported by Allen & Overy, will present the background to the Award and the emerging best practice in this area including through profiles of the finalists and semi-finalists’ programs, and also present the European Dialogue – the recently-published e-MFP paper summarising the Award.

To this end, we’re delighted to welcome three speakers:

• Audrey Joubert is an Operations Officer at Advans International. She monitors agrifinance activities and digital loans innovations in Advans Group subsidiaries. Audrey worked for three years as a Project Manager at Advans Côte d’Ivoire. She supported the institution in implementing a digital savings project for cocoa farmers, giving them access to services through a USSD menu on a mobile phone, and took part in the launch of a digital school loan.
  
  

• Graham A.N. Wright founded MicroSave and is its Group Managing Director. Graham served on the steering committee of M-PESA and oversaw work to support its initial pilot-test and customer education. He also led the MSC teams charged with facilitating the digital transformation of Equity Bank, which now serves nearly 15 million customers in six countries. MSC runs the Financial Inclusion Lab in India, and works on comprehensive digital transformation across Asia and Africa. Graham has worked on a wide variety of digital projects with banks and telcos in Bangladesh, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

• Aurélie Wildt Dagneaux is a Partner at PHB Development and in charge of PHB’s West Africa operations. She has enabled over 20 financial institutions (MFI, Banks and mobile operators) throughout Africa to unlock their potential for their digital journey, from strategy to implementation, providing them with technical assistance and training. Over 2016-2018, she has managed and co-authored a series of 6 Toolkits with UNCDF and Mastercard Foundation aimed at Financial Service Providers going digital: “How to Succeed in Your Digital Journey”.

The moderator of the discussion will be Sam Mendelson is Financial Inclusion Specialist at e-MFP, as well as a Board Director for the Financial Inclusion Forum UK – and the lead author of the annual European Dialogue series on the Award, as well as part of the pre-selection committee for the past three years. He is the author of e-MFP’s Financial Inclusion Compass, was previously Knowledge Specialist at Arc Finance, and was the co-author from 2009-2014 of Microfinance Banana Skins.

To register for this event, please go to Eventbrite.

We hope to see you on 23^rd May for what will be a fascinating discussion.

Financial Inclusion Forum UK

European Microfinance Platform