Searching: Research & Analysis

Big Futures for the Smallest Firms: Finance That Works for Nano, Micro and Small Enterprises

Nano, micro, and small enterprises, particularly nano enterprises and those led by women, encounter substantial financial obstacles. Our latest research underscores the necessity for tailored financial solutions and hybrid approaches to enhance financial inclusion for the smallest firms, enabling them to grow and thrive.

Resilience for All: Why Inclusive Finance Can't Wait

The world faces urgent challenges as risks intensify and interconnect, amplifying vulnerabilities, especially for low-income populations and small and medium enterprises (MSEs). If left unaddressed, these vulnerabilities can create ripple effects with national, regional, and global consequences. This paper highlights the importance of inclusive finance as an indispensable component of resilience responses, and calls on everyone working on increasing resilience to leverage inclusive finance to enhance the reach, speed, and impact of their work.

Diverse Paths: Finance for Women’s Nano and Micro Enterprises

Women-led nano and micro enterprises (WNMEs) are vital for providing livelihoods, boosting communities, and driving local economies. However, they face barriers like insufficient start-up capital and limited networking. This publication delves into deeper the tailored solutions needed to support their growth based on in-depth research in India, Kenya and Uganda.

Gender-Smart Market Mapping for Nano and Micro Enterprises: A Practical Guide

Segmentation and market sizing helps in allocating development efforts, guide investments, and identify policy gaps for women-led nano and micro enterprises (WNME). This technical guide offers steps to understand the WNME landscape, design targeted products, and foster inclusivity for growth.

Innovative Financing for Inclusive Credit Fintechs in Africa

This focus note explores innovative financing strategies for inclusive credit fintechs in Africa, identifying knowledge gaps and highlighting digital innovations in MSE credit markets.

Empowering Small Giants: Inclusive Embedded Finance for Micro-retailers

This focus note outlines various business models that incorporate last-mile retailers into digital ordering platforms, offering them convenience, transparency, and a wide range of products.

Leveraging Transactional Data for Micro and Small Enterprise Lending

The use of transactional data for credit underwriting can play a part in closing the estimated US$4.9 trillion global financing gap for micro and small enterprises. This case study examines the data and experience of two fintechs in India that use different sets of transactional data for credit scoring.

Building Value in Microfinance Through Digitization: A Role for Funders

This note highlights the importance of funders in supporting the digital transformation of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The focus is on business intelligence and credit renewal automation to increase the success rate of MFI digitization. Funders play a crucial role in ensuring that MFIs continue to serve the most excluded and underserved customers in the future.

Building Value in Microfinance Through Digitization: Lessons from Loan Automation Pilots

Digitization has brought both hope and frustration to the microfinance industry. To address this, we identified and tested five core principles for successful implementation. This focus note summarizes our experience, evaluates the validity of the five principles, and offers key lessons learned for other industry stakeholders to adopt and scale a similar approach.

The Promise of Fintech for Micro and Small Enterprises

This reading deck highlights technological trends and fintech business models with high potential to reach underserved MSEs with improved and responsible financial services.