Target audience
Banks, Telcos, Programme managers and brands, particularly those operating in emerging markets.
Detailed definition
Best Initiative in Financial Inclusion is open to any payments programme that seeks to drive digital access by connecting excluded and underserved populations to formal financial services. These services should be delivered at an affordable price to customers and be economically sustainable for providers.
The initiative can use mobile or physical tokens and include components such as agency networks and small trader acceptance. The judges are particularly keen to see examples of financial inclusion from developing markets, but this does not exclude initiatives from more developed markets targeting niches that are currently underserved by traditional financial services offerings. The entry may be a new aspect to an existing programme, or an entirely new programme if it focuses on payments.
The entrant may be the initiative operator/manager, the technology provider or financial institution/partner. Initiatives must be live and out of the test phase at the time of submission. Pilot programmes will be accepted but must clearly be described as such and the judges will be looking for evidence of success in the pilot.
Initiatives may be running in any country/countries.
Please provide the following information:
Nominee and nominator
- Name of nominating organisation
- Initiative name (entry title)
- Which country/countries does the programme operate in?
- Name(s) of nominated organisation(s)
- The nature of the business relationship between you as the nominator and the nominee company
Initiative description
The judges will assess your entry against the following criteria. You are free to describe the programme and support your case with additional material as you think appropriate. However, we strongly suggest that you do NOT submit generic promotional material and sales brochures. Please limit your submission to a maximum of 1,500 words.
The criteria are:
- The initiative focuses on payments.
- The initiative provides benefit/value to the financial excluded or underserved. And a description of why/who is excluded or underserved.
- The initiative provides benefit/value to the initiative owner.
- The initiative has leveraged brand, channels or other capabilities and technologies to deliver innovative solutions to specific problems or opportunities posed.
- The initiative has performed well and the submission is supported with quantitative evidence of success from a reliable source.
- The initiative stands out from its competition either through performance, innovation, value to stakeholders, added value features or other means as described in the submission.
Evidence of success/metrics
Please provide as much information as you can and quote the source of that information. Such information might include the following, but this is not an exhaustive list and in each case the judges will be looking for evidence that supports your claims about the key benefits of the programme:
- The length of time the initiative has been live
- The number of users since launch until the date of submission
- Some aspect of volume relevant to the solution; this could be payments, transactions, remittances or other since launch until the date of submission
- Growth in use, both historical and extrapolated projections
- How has this transformed the user experience?
