Success stories about financial inclusion around the world.
Share your success stories/case studies
We are excited to highlight positive impact of financial inclusion related initiatives undertaken by the Fluid Ice Foundation, its partners/supporters, and like-minded mission driven organizations globally. We are committed to being an advocate and be the platform of all successful financial inclusion efforts globally, thereby inspiring more people to join our financial inclusion movement. Share with us your success stories/case studies, and we will be glad to publish it to this page!
Case Study: Savings and Retail Banking in Africa - Connecting with low-income customers through digitalization
Digitalization is among the most powerful forces driving change in the financial services industry in Africa, as elsewhere. The social and economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic have accelerated this underlying trend significantly. Until recently many Africans lacked devices to access the internet and infrastructure was poor. But now widespread use of mobile technology is driving digital access on the continent, which now has more mobile subscribers than the United States or Europe. Further strong growth is forecast.
Al Barid Bank - Morocco
From the outset, Al Barid Bank has taken a strategic approach based on financial inclusion and digital capabilities, creating the mobile banking service Barid Bank Mobile (BBM). The operations carried out via BBM increased significantly with the increased digital reliance due to the onset of COVID in March 2020 (5.4 million transactions, an increase of 64%). Due to this adoption of digital technologies, Al Barid Bank has grown substantially and is now the largest bank in Morocco (with a 25% market share) and has the most mobile accounts (1.8 million).
Equity Bank - Kenya
Whilst on the brink of collapse, Equity Bank sought a digital transformation to fundamentally change their approach to seek new customers and broaden their horizons. Equity Bank began to focus on microfinance, and targeting underserved customers by bringing the bank to them. To this end, Equity Bank created a digital platform, as well as Equitel, a virtual mobile network operator, to ensure its customers always have digital/mobile access to its services. As a result, Equity Bank grew from being declared technically insolvent, to now having over 13 million customers, with branches in several African countries, and has trained 40,000 agents to better reach/serve their customers. Equity Bank’s diaspora remittances have grown by 27% to $1.42 billion, more than a 50% market share in Kenya, and has introduced EazzyFX, an electronic platform for digital foreign-currency transactions.
Consolidated Bank - Ghana
The Consolidated Bank of Ghana (CBG) is leveraging FinTech technology to develop innovation and deliver a better, more inclusive online experience to customers. CBG is working with a Ghanaian FinTech, to provide a digital lending platform, utilizing mobile usage data to determine creditworthiness. The CBG is also working to target SME’s and provide a digital platform for them to grow and access the capital they need. This focus on digital helped CBG take on 1 million new customers during COVID-19, bringing total retail customers to about 3 million. CBG has also obtained approval to onboard certain customers with just an identity document and a phone number, ending the requirement for an address and taxpayer identity numbers, helping onboard/include many more low-income customers.
Case Study: The Power of Jan Dhan - Making Finance Work for Women in India
Empowered Women, Enterprising Nation
India has made significant progress in ensuring financial inclusion over the past few years. Of all the initiatives introduced to create universal access to financial facilities, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) has been the gamechanger. While launching the program, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the occasion as one to celebrate the “liberation of the poor from a vicious cycle.” As of August 2021, 55% of PMJDY accounts (23.76 crore or 237.6 million) of 42.89 crore (428.9 million) were owned by women, making women Jan Dhan account holders a majority in the PMJDY portfolio. Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) and Stand-Up India (SUPI), continue to witness the highest women participation. PMMY was launched in 2015 to provide loans up to ₹10 lakh to non-corporate, non-farm MSMEs, and 68 percent of loan borrowers are women. Women beneficiaries of Stand-Up – launched in 2016 to promote entrepreneurship at the grass-root level – constitute 82%.
Raj Mehta is the Founder and CEO of the Fluid Ice Foundation. As a high school student in the Atlanta metro, Georgia, Raj always enjoys helping others, and aspires to give back to society at every opportunity that comes along. Raj is particularly passionate about financial inclusion, to expand access to financial services to the un/underbanked subsets of the population. Although the un/underbanked subsets of the population have always been excluded, the recent COVID pandemic has made it even more apparent, and caused them to be even further left behind. Raj sees himself as a “social impact catalyst” and a “changemaker” to help mitigate the financial divide, and he aims to make this a reality through his nonprofit – Fluid Ice Foundation. Raj is also a financial education instructor helping increase financial literacy awareness and education, especially amongst the underprivileged youth.
Raj is focused to be a social impact entrepreneur/innovator, championing sustainable innovation by transforming societal assets/capital to enable disruptive solutions providing a positive return to society.
On a more personal note, Raj enjoys mathematics and has won numerous prestigious math competitions (qualified to Mathcounts Nationals to represent the State of Georgia, AIME, AMC, etc.), is a proficient saxophonist (member, Georgia Music Educator’s Association (GMEA) Allstate Band), is an advanced chess player, and a professionally trained/skilled golfer. He is also an avid book reader in his spare time.
Vijay is the Banking and Capital Markets Leader for Deloitte South Asia. He has over 25 years of consulting experience spanning strategy, business planning, organizational transformation and M&A in India, as well as in Canada, the UK and South East Asia. Among other topics in banking and capital markets, he has significant experience in fintech solutions and related partnership models.
Vijay is also a founding team member of I_Imagine_India, an India-based philanthropic fund looking to empower non-government organizations and social entrepreneurs/pioneers in the field of education in India. I_Imagine_India’s goal is to enable small changes today in the field of primary/ pre-primary education, with the potential to deliver disproportionate learning outcome improvements over the longer term.
Vijay obtained an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (PGPX) and the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter from the USA.
Vijay is an Advisor to the Fluid Ice Foundation in his personal capacity and not on behalf of Deloitte or I_Imagine_India.
Saiprasad Muzumdar, Advisor
Saiprasad ‘Zoom’ Muzumdar, is an experienced Senior Technology Leader in International Banking and Finance Sector. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a Master’s degree in Management. He has worked across the globe for International Fortune 500 companies such as Unisys, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest Group. He has conducted sessions on Financial Wellbeing for more than a decade with a mission to enhance financial inclusion and financial wellbeing through Financial literacy.
Amit Pandit, Advisor
Amit is a qualified chartered accountant with over 25 years of experience in banking, financial services, capital markets, risk advisory services & financial education. He has experience in building a primary market distribution network, investment banking and handling HNI relationships. He has been involved in personal finance restructuring of many individual businessmen. He has helped many business and individuals for their financial requirements be it for loan arrangements or debt management or asset management. He served as a director of the largest coop bank in India for over 13 years and as a director of a listed company for over 5 years.
He is also associated as a visiting faculty with various business schools for over a decade and takes up subjects of Personal Finance Planning, Wealth Management, Mergers & Acquisitions & Corporate Valuation. He also takes corporate training programs for finance. He speaks at various platforms on various finance, audit and risk related topics including ICAI, BCAS etc. Amit looks after the business building, financial & investor education function at Trugrow.
Amit enjoys his reading, is passionate about his teaching, likes travelling and exploring new destinations and is an avid foodie.
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