Country: Pakistan

Fraud in Mobile Financial Services: Protecting Consumers, Providers, and the System

09 Sep 2017

This Brief highlights how fraud is impacting mobile money providers, agents, and consumers, as well as efforts to reduce risks and vulnerabilities to fraud in mobile money and related services. While it is not possible to remove fraud entirely from any service—mobile money included—the examples addressed here show that fraud is a major issue in several key markets for consumers and agents, and that there are simple steps providers can […]

Building a Secure and Inclusive Global Financial Ecosystem

08 Sep 2017

The 2017 Brookings Financial and Digital Inclusion Project (FDIP) report evaluates access to and usage of affordable financial services by underserved people across 26 geographically, politically, and economically diverse countries. The report assesses these countries’ financial inclusion ecosystems based on four dimensions of financial inclusion: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of selected traditional and digital financial services.  The report further examines key developments in the global financial inclusion landscape, highlights selected financial […]

My Turn to Speak: Voices of Microfinance Clients in Benin, Pakistan, Peru and Georgia

26 Feb 2016

The Smart Campaign, a global organization working to promote a set of Client Protection Principles in the financial inclusion sector, has long recognized that client perspectives were underrepresented in consumer protection discussions. With the Client Voices project, the Campaign questioned whether assumptions made about what constitutes problematic treatment rightly reflected what clients themselves worry about. To address this gap, the Campaign launched the Client Voices project, an ambitious research endeavor […]

Bringing Client to the Centre: A consolidated report on client protection practices in Pakistan’s microfinance sector

12 Feb 2016

This collated “State of Practice in Client Protection” report documents and consolidates findings from seventeen Client Protection assessments of Pakistan Microfinance Network’s member organizations. These assessments were conducted over a period of three years (2013-2015) under the Client Protection Initiative (CPI). The Client Protection Initiative (CPI) was a 3-year project funded under State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Financial Inclusion Program (FIP), which kicked off in January 2013 and ended in […]

Client Voices Pakistan Country Report

31 Oct 2015

From March to October 2014, Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA) conducted qualitative and quantitative research on consumer protection issues related to microfinance in Pakistan for the Smart Campaign’s Client Voices project. The Client Voices project investigates clients’ own understanding of what constitutes good and bad treatment in their dealings with microfinance providers (MFPs) in four markets: Pakistan, Benin, Peru, and Georgia. First, qualitative research using focus group discussions and individual interviews […]

Client Protection: The State of Practice

10 Jun 2015

CLIENT PROTECTION: THE STATE OF PRACTICE A look at client protection practices in Pakistan’s microfinance industry Due to its developmental origin, it is in the nature of microfinance that clients be placed at the heart of it. Given the reputational risks faced of late, it is pertinent to ensure that the industry – practitioners and investors alike – stay true to the clients they serve. Without doing so, it exposes itself to […]