M-CRIL in Southeast Asia – Myanmar

M-CRIL has made a major commitment to Myanmar which has been a focus country for our work since 2001. Since 2014, we have an office in Myanmar with Pankaj Kumar as our Country Manager. More on our work in Myanmar.

Our MD speaks on Microfinance in Myanmar at European Microfinance Week on 17 November.  See report on the panel discussion on Myanmar’s microfinance sector,

Time to get real about women and financial inclusion

Our director Frances Sinha facilitated this (one and only) all-women panel at the Inclusive Finance India Summit, 6 December 2016. Stand by for the blog on the recommendations.

Read what was published in the summit bulletin

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Meeting farmers’ needs for various inputs by establishing input retail shops & establishment of a flour mill

Case study of Aadarsh FPCL, Muzaffarpur

Aadarsh Farmer Producer Company Limited promoted and supported by M-CRIL/EDA and based at Kurhani, Muzaffarpur is owned by marginal farmers from Kurhani block, Muzaffarpur (Bihar). The FPC established an agricultural input retail shop in January 2016 to sell various authentic agricultural inputs at reasonable prices to farmers

Read more >>

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Briefing Note: Much still to do: microfinance and the long journey to financial inclusion in India

OPM has partnered with EDA Rural Systems* to conduct the concurrent evaluation of UKAID’s PSIG programme in north India. This briefing paper was written by Frances Sinha, Sanjay Sinha, James Copestake and Sukhwinder Arora

*EDA Rural Systems now merged with M-CRIL is a leading consultancy for microfinance, financial inclusion and livelihoods/value chains, based in India and working throughout Asia and Africa.

See Note

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Making the Case for Outcomes Management to Financial Service Providers

What is outcomes management? How do financial service providers use outcomes data?

Author: Frances Sinha, Editor: Amelia Greenberg

See Report

Notes from the Field 2: Digital finance – the promise and the risks

Digital finance – the promise and the risks Notes from the Field 2

An old lady approaches a fintech kiosk, puts her thumb on a device which captures her biometric details, the system accesses her bank details in which she receives her monthly grants and her credit history, creates an auto debit mandate on her bank account and a loan is credited to her account in less than 10 minutes. She uses her card to withdraw a part of the loan amount from the next-door ATM. Does she know that by putting her thumb on the device, she has given multiple consents including an authorisation

Read more to create an auto debit instruction on her bank account?

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Notes from the Field 1 – How ready is India to go digital?

There is a push for digitising payments across the board in India. This has picked up steam since demonetisation in November 2016. But, how ready and willing are Indians to adopt digital payments?
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Our Director, Frances Sinha joins the roundtable and panel on outcomes management at the European Microfinance Platform in Luxembourg, 16-18 November.

This is based on her work as facilitator of the Outcomes Working Group for the Social Performance Task Force, and two new publications, below.

Notes from the Field 1 – How ready is India to go digital?

 

“ऐ साहेब ई मोदी जी वाला बात ह ठीक बा लेकिन इहा त ढेर लोगन के मोबाइल से नंबरे मिलावे न आवेला |”

(Oh sir, this Modi ji’s approach is all very well but many
 people here don’t even know how to dial a number on a mobile phone)
There is a push for digitising payments across the board in India. This has picked up steam since demonetisation in November 2016. But, how ready and willing are Indians to adopt digital payments? This question needs more thought as there continue to be issues related to mobile phone penetration, bank account features, acceptance of digital payments across value chains and viability (for users) related to small transactions.

It will take a substantial effort at digital literacy to universalise the digitisation of transactions.  We realised this recently (March-April 2017) when as part of an M-CRIL team, we were designing and delivering training programmes on digital payments in Bihar (north India). We were covering artisan clusters where people practise a certain art or craft that is specific to an area (for example, Sea Shell Craft, Rag Dolls, Wooden Toys, Madhubani Paintings, Sikki Grass Craft and Sujini Embroidery). Our trainings covered over 1,000 artisans, mostly from low income segments, nearly half were women.

This is what the artisans told us:

“My business turnover is small. Phones cost money as does running them,” – 45% did not own a phone. The rest mostly owned and used old-style feature phones.

“Our account features (no-frills account) do not allow for a debit card” – To be able to use the most basic form of digital payment, USSD (banking transactions using a feature phone and no internet), you need to have a debit card in addition to a phone – only 15% of artisans covered in our program reported having a debit card!

”You are explaining this to me, but who is going to convince my supplier?” Digital payments are no good for artisans when others in their value chain (suppliers and traders) will not accept this form of payment. We managed to include suppliers and traders in some of our trainings, but clearly more targeted trainings are needed.

“My turnover is Rs20,000 per month and after all expenses, I get about Rs5,000 to Rs6,000 per month in hand. Why should I use digital payments for such small amounts?” We need to be able to present use cases for digital payments that are tailor made for our target group.

“What if I press a wrong button? Will it wipe off all the money in my account?” There were some who seemed to be too scared to adopt digital payments for fear of making mistakes while doing a digital transaction 

While it is important to push for digital payments and educating people in using these, it is not as simple as walking into a village and telling the community why they should go digital. We need a lot more thought and a nuanced approach to promoting digital finance.