Social Efficiency in Microfinance Institutions: Identifying How to Improve It

This article analyzes the determinants for social and economic efficiency in Microfinance Institutions using a Seemingly Unrelated Regression. We find two factors that improve their relative efficiency: legal status and target market; however, age and scale are not clear determinants. The main contribution of this paper is to engage MFIs to achieve the desired social efficiency without giving up economic efficiency as the two can be complementary; moreover, it is possible to be efficient as an NBFI/NGO with small size and low-end target, at least. The paper is a new contribution in line with the so-called paradox of social cost

Mobile banking in the government-to-person payment sector for financial inclusion in Pakistan

Whilst there have been growing interest and efforts by governments in developing countries to disburse digital government-to-person (G2P) payments to promote financial inclusion, the role of mobile banking in the receipt of social cash remains under-researched. Through an interpretive case study of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in Pakistan, this paper applies Orlikowski’s Duality of Technology that critically examines mobile banking usage by women beneficiaries and technology's effects on the institutional properties of their households. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews from participants located in Pakistan. The findings highlighted that mobile banking enabled women to receive the full amount of grants, securely and conveniently, from agents. However, mobile banking imposed human, socio-economic and technological constraints which restricted women's access to and usage of financial services that limited financial inclusion. Women were socially and politically empowered, thereby, social inclusion was transformative. This paper theoretically contributes to the Duality of Technology framework that was deterministic for women beneficiaries. The study accentuates the redesign of mobile banking to match women's capabilities, and imparting financial and digital training to them. Also, the provision of a range of financial resources to beneficiaries may steer micro-entrepreneurial activities to advance the inclusion agenda in Pakistan

Financial Inclusion and the Linkages to Stability, Integrity and Protection : Insights from the South African Experience

International Standard-Setting Bodies (SSBs) and national policy makers-including financial regulators-pursue the core objectives of financial stability, financial integrity and financial consumer protection. These advances challenge financial regulators to consider how to optimize the linkages among the four distinct policy objectives financial inclusion, financial stability, financial integrity, and financial consumer protection. There is good reason to believe that, at the level of outcomes, ISIP objectives may be mutually reinforcing and interdependent: no long term stability without inclusion, for example, and vice versa. In practice, at the policy level, the linkages are less well known and policy makers face choices that are unnecessarily framed as tradeoffs. This report introduces and develops the concept that a proportionate approach to any financial inclusion measure (and specifically to its regulatory and supervisory design and implementation) should seek to optimize the ISIP linkages: maximizing synergies and minimizing tradeoffs and other negative outcomes. In South Africa, the four ISIP objectives are also the four pillars of national financial sector policy; and financial inclusion in various forms has been a key objective for the postapartheid period. The study sought to understand in each case: 1) whether the ISIP linkages were considered at the time of the intervention; 2) what was done to mitigate potential ISIP risks; and 3) as far as the available data allowed, what linkages have been manifest to-date