Publication database

P2P business models like Airbnb or Uber provide an organised way to collectively share certain resources. Could similar solutions reduce the barriers to sharing of the limited existing sanitation facilities in low income countries? During 2016 and 2017 Inclusive Business Sweden and Aqua for All, supported by Unilever and funded by Transform, carried out a project named ‘Peer-to-peer Business Models to Meet Sanitation Needs’ to explore this possibility.

Insurance supervisors in emerging markets have developed different approaches to foster markets for inclusive insurance. Several markets have undergone transformative changes as a result, but what has been the impact of these measures? The Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii) and the Facility have commissioned this study to assess the impact of microinsurance regulatory frameworks on developing inclusive insurance markets by way of a Regulatory Impact Assessment. 

The paper discusses agricultural insurance subsidy in detail and draws upon available literature and case study experiences to propose good practice guidelines for the design and implementation.

When Pioneer Insurance started offering insurance for low-income households in 2007, it had one distribution partner – CARD MRI. Today, after ten years, Pioneer’s joint-venture with CARD MRI - CARD Pioneer Microinsurance – works with almost 100 institutional partners, has issued more than 18 million policies in 2016, and generated Php 936 million pesos (USD 19 million) of premiums. Pioneer Microinsurance is currently one of the biggest commercial microinsurance provider in the Philippines.

Bundling agriculture insurance with other services like credit and better farm inputs is fast emerging as a possible solution to help agriculture insurance to achieve better social outcomes, make insurance more tangible and enable schemes to scale faster. There is evidence that states that access to agricultural insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier, yet more rewarding, production choices in agriculture. However, insurance as a standalone product may not be sufficient to overcome the binding constraints of farmers. Hence, bundling provides more value for all the players in the value chain. 

This case study traces Evidence Action from origin to the launch and expansion of Dispensers for Safe Water in Uganda. It first describes the Dispensers’ pilot in eastern Uganda and then explore Evidence Action’s process of preparing for and scaling Dispensers across Uganda.

The social economy is a reality in many people’s lives because it promotes values and principles that focus on people’s needs and on their communities. In a spirit of voluntary participation, self-help and self-reliance, and through enterprises and organisations, it seeks to balance economic success with fairness and social justice, from the local level to the global level. Because of their social and economic purposes, social economy organisations are often vulnerable at the financial level; they have difficulty building financial reserves or covering their operating costs. Conventional private investors often see social economy organisations as being unattractive. Social economy organisations often have to rely on public subsidies which can present challenges for their autonomy. This paper explores the different financing streams (i.e. membership funds, grants, debts, equity and quasi-equity finance) used by social economy organisations by focusing on three case studies from Canada, Kenya, and the United Kingdom. Based on the case studies and on financial literature, the paper proposes what could be the constitutive elements of a good and balanced model for financing social economy organisations.

Angkor Mikroheranhvatho Kampuchea (AMK) participated in the ILO Microfinance for Decent Work (MF4DW) action research from 2008-2012. As part of this global experimental research, AMK introduced a financial education programme in two rural branches. The programme aimed to address challenges that clients faced in regard to the risk management strategies they use and their levels of indebtedness. The impact of the financial education programme on clients’ financial attitude and behaviour, risk management strategies, asset building, over-indebtedness and multiple borrowing, and vulnerability, was measured employing a difference-in-difference methodology. The econometric analysis is based on a balanced three-wave panel data set with target and control groups. It shows that AMK’s financial education programme had the strongest impact on the repayment behaviour of clients with a significant reduction of 3.4 per cent in late repayments. The innovation also had significant and positive impact on asset building outcome variables such as insurance take-up with a 10 per cent increase. The programme positively influenced financial attitude as shown by a significant decrease in client belief that it is impossible to save, clients’ association of savings and security increasing by 1 per cent as well as changing attitudes towards borrowing. However, the analysis also shows insignificant and/or unexpected results for other outcome variables, which may be due to some issues with the experimental design of the research and the survey instrument. It is therefore possible that the innovation may have had a stronger impact than actually measured and reported in this document.

The evaluation showed that TYM’s integrated risk management and microinsurance client training had the strongest effect on the financial attitudes of clients, especially on planning attitudes and on attitudes related to savings. The percentage of clients in the target compared to the control group that agreed to be able to put money aside for emergency expenses increased by a remarkable 22 per cent and the attitude towards planning household budgets for longer than a year improved by 17 per cent. Impact on client risk management behaviour was also strong by contributing to improving a number of situations that clients face. For example, clients who had access to the training less often ran out of money before making income than clients who did not have access to the training (decrease of 13 per cent). Interestingly, the observed change in financial attitudes regarding savings and planning already reflected in changed financial behaviour related to the same as we saw a 17 per cent increase in the ability to set aside money for emergencies as well as a 13 percent increase in clients with longer planning horizons. The analysis also showed some insignificant and some unexpected results for other outcome variables, which may be due to some issues with the experimental design of the research and the survey instrument. It is therefore possible that the innovation may have had a stronger impact than actually measured.