By Sarah Rotman, CGAP - Bill Maurer and Olga Morawczynski’s blog post from a few weeks ago discussed a topic that seems to be on everyone’s mind: innovation in mobile money…or the lack thereof. This has generated a lot of comments and even follow-up blog posts, like one by Bill Barhydt from m-Via. Bill and Olga made some good points about... 

By: Camilo Tellez, Mobile Money for the Unbanked - Matu Onyango is a farmer in the region of Nanyuki, 250 km north of Nairobi.  His family’s welfare depends solely on the income derived from maize crops. During the last drought that afflicted the region, not only did his crop suffer, but one of his four children fell seriously ill. Thus, Matu’s... 

Asian Development Bank News Release - MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing technical assistance to help remove barriers to microinsurance development in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Mongolia which could benefit millions of poor families and unlock household savings for productive economic use. In... 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — CGAP today announced that Tilman Ehrbeck will be its new CEO. Ehrbeck, a Partner at McKinsey & Company, will succeed Elizabeth Littlefield, who was recently appointed President and CEO of OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation). The CGAP CEO is also a Director at the World Bank Group. Ehrbeck... 

From Business Standard, India - Buoyed by 28.4 per cent jump in net profit, Punjab National Bank (PNB), aims at raising deposits by 20 per cent during 2010-11 besides launching micro insurance products in six months. “Our plan is to increase deposits by 20 per cent and credit by 22 per cent during the current fiscal. Deposits rose to Rs 2.55... 

PRLog (Press Release) – African Aurora Business Network (AABN) is an enterprise development organisation that promotes SME’s in semi-urban and rural areas by providing a comprehensive package of advisory support services on capacity building, market access, technology and access to financing and productive resources. African Aurora Business... 

From Bangkok Post - Thailand Post offices nationwide could be transformed into microfinance centres as part of the government’s bid to extend financial services to lower-income groups, said Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij. The postal service’s 1,200 branches and tens of thousands of staff nationwide could serve as a broad distribution... 

From Springwise.com - One-third of the world’s population today has no access to any form of modern energy, relying instead on highly polluting fuels like wood and kerosene. Working on the premise that reliable energy is a key to fighting poverty — and that it needs to be clean — Energy in Common is a New York-based nonprofit dedicated... 

By Namrata Acharya, Business Standard India - It was merely a coincidence that the year after C K Prahalad’s bestseller, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits (2004), that Vikram Akula returned to SKS Microfinance, leaving a consultancy job at McKinsey & Company in Chicago that he took a year earlier. Akula,... 

PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 30, 2010 – Freedom from Hunger has successfully completed a $6 million project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The four-year grant enabled Freedom from Hunger and five microfinance banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America to add health protection options to their financial offerings, reaching...