Top Ten Blog Posts of 2018

Coming in at #1 we have our revelatory blog post on our new name. Looks like we piqued your curiosity when we changed our name after 18 years. The Microfinance Gateway became FinDev Gateway. Why the name change? Read this blog post to find out!

Financial services for refugees was a hot topic this year, as the two blog posts we published on it made it into the top ten (see also #9). High repayment rates, technology solutions, and new research tell us that it’s time for the financial industry to think about refugees.

The provocative title probably drew many readers to this blog post, which takes a big picture view of microfinance and debates whether it is still relevant. Where is the microfinance industry going now and what do MFIs need to do to stay relevant?

India is the top country where FinDev Gateway users come from, so it’s no surprise that a blog post on this big, diverse country would draw in a lot of readers. Especially a post on the challenges of dealing with their country’s - and the world’s first! - ground-breaking biometric-based payments system. In this post, Grameen Foundation - one of our top blog contributors - shares their experience with the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS).

Everyone wants to know what’s going on in mysterious China. Fintechs are huge there and mobile platforms seem to be taking over the economy. Is this helping them on a path to greater financial inclusion? This blog post looks at two Chinese fintech models to illustrate the opportunities and risks involved.

Every year our partners over at Child and Youth Finance International put together some interesting and illuminating content ahead of their annual Global Money Week. This blog post helps to dispel some common myths about financial education for young people.

It is always a privilege to work with our partners at European Microfinance Week and meet the fascinating speakers they line up each year. This year, we got to talk crowdfunding with Marloes Noppen of Symbiotics and learn about the growing role it is playing in the inclusive finance sector.

One of our first blog posts of the year, this post was part of the blog series Women’s Financial Inclusion Data, which took a deep-dive into the demand and supply-side data sets on financial inclusion, using a gender lens to understand data availability, limitations, and challenges. The blogs were based on a series of online learning events hosted by FinEquity (formerly known as Women’s Financial Inclusion Community of Practice), which aimed to shed light on existing sex-disaggregated data in financial inclusion.

More on the hot topic of financial services for refugees. See #2 above! This post was also part of FinDev Gateway’s participation in CFI-Accion’s Financial Inclusion Week this year, which had a theme of “Getting Inclusion Right.”

Another contribution from our prolific partners at FinEquity (formerly known as Women's Financial Inclusion Community of Practice), this blog post looks at how we can incorporate gender norms into microfinance client protection principles.