Financial Inclusion
Addressing the regulatory environment and promoting access to financial services using the latest technology.
As one of fastest growing African economies, innovations and improved infrastructure can increase financial services to the Ethiopian population, specifically in the rural areas.
Enterprise Partners worked to include those excluded from accessing financial services in Ethiopia through a two-pronged approach: addressing both the regulatory environment and promoting access to financial services using the latest technology. We addressed regulatory and policy issues through contact with policy makers and regulators, building knowledge in the sector and information on digital financial services in particular. This is expected to lead to a greater appetite for digital finance implementation as part of the government’s national financial inclusion strategy.
Other initiatives undertaken by Enterprise Partners relating to digital financial services, include the promotion of agent banking systems, tiered KYC (know your customer), and ‘mobile money’ (bill payment, bus-ticketing and other micro-payments using a mobile phone).
Theory of Change
Digital Finance
Digital Financial Services (DFS) require relevant and appropriate products to operate at a viable scale. Enterprise Partners (EP) worked to mobilise savings and investment while increasing financial literacy to reduce income inequality and poverty.
Interventions in the digital finance market focused on developing agent networks, establishing regulations and frameworks toward electronic payment systems to encourage a cashless economy. Interventions such as mobile bill payments, SACCO agency banking, and transaction pool study – all focus on how to make access to financial services easier for those at the base of the economic pyramid. As a result, those with limited access to financial services will utilise digital money methods, and intra-personal money transfers.
To surpass the challenge of the lack of national IDs as requirement for opening bank accounts (faced by many who live far from their places of origin), Enterprise Partners worked with private banks to install other methods of identity verification using biometric data registration devices and systems.
