The working poor may get paid just once a year.

Low-income farmers are vulnerable to extreme weather conditions.

The world’s entrepreneurs face a $5 trillion financing gap.

Climate change affects the poorest households most.

We focus on global challenges

How we work

Priya Punatar

Yanina Seltzer

<div style="width: 391px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img src="http://accion-staging.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_0825.jpg" alt="" width="381" height="508" />Azucena, a stay at home mom and former bank teller in Mexico</div>
Although Mexico and Chile are different markets, underserved consumers face similar problems improving their financial health. People and businesses rely on informal means to manage money, including storing cash in lockboxes and borrowing from family and friends. These methods are familiar and convenient, but they don’t provide the guidance, tools, and information people need to better manage their income and expenses, build reserves, and plan for the future.
In Chile, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/reports/233399/gallup-global-financial-health-study-2018.aspx">nearly half of the population</a> feels unsure about how they would cover their basic needs for more than a month if they lost their income. Following several financial crises, consumers are hesitant to trust<a href="https://www.accion.org/five-reasons-small-merchants-arent-using-financial-services-in-chile/"> financial institutions</a>, and many see working with banks as a last resort. One business owner in Santiago expressed a sentiment that we heard from many Chileans: “I would prefer to be indebted to my family than to a bank.”
We’ve seen similar patterns in Mexico, where, over the last three years, the percentage of adults who save at financial institutions declined from 15 percent to 10 percent. In an interview, Azucena, a stay-at-home mom who previously worked as a bank teller, told us that she and her husband prefer to <a href="https://www.accion.org/people-saving-money-mexico">save cash </a>in lockboxes in order to have money at home for unexpected emergencies. When it comes to credit, many people told us that they often hear negative stories about defaults, rather than positive stories about people using credit to improve their lives.
These behaviors indicate that FSPs could do more to better understand their clients’ needs and goals, build greater trust, and deliver more valuable products and services.

<div style="width: 4938px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img src="http://accion-staging.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DSC_0388.jpg" alt="" width="4928" height="3264" />FSP employees participate in a <a href="https://www.accion.org/building-and-deploying-user-centric-products">human-centered design exercise</a> in Chile</div>
For decades, Accion has worked around the world to help FSPs deliver the products that underserved clients need to access, use, and benefit from the formal financial sector. Our hybrid approach combines human-centered design, insights into emerging technologies, and effective business models to create financial services that accelerate social and economic progress.
Over the next 18 months, Accion, <a href="https://www.accion.org/accion-and-metlife-foundation-announce-expanded-partnership-to-advance-financial-inclusion/">in partnership with MetLife Foundation</a>, will apply this approach with five FSPs in Mexico and Chile. We’ll work alongside these institutions to develop viable products and services that reach underserved clients and improve their financial health. This process will include building the business case for customer-centric products; managing organizational change; and designing, testing, and implementing product innovations.
We’ll begin by using human-centered design, which links product and service design to customers’ needs and lives. By first understanding the challenges that low-income clients face and the goals they want to achieve, FSPs can create products and experiences that are available at the right moments, provide visibility into users’ finances, and take into account customers’ aspirations. Such products can lead to improved financial health, better decision-making, and more informed financial management.
While considering our clients’ needs and their goals, we’ll integrate behavioral science to create products and experiences that support healthy financial behaviors and habits. For example, behavioral scientists know that people tend to prioritize the present over the future and put off tasks that feel stressful, like budgeting, saving, and long-term planning. By taking this tendency into account and creating products that balance the management of day-to-day finances with future planning, we can promote clients’ financial health.
Ultimately, our understanding of low-income clients’ needs, the application of behavioral insights, and our focus on business considerations will inform the creation and deployment of new products that improve underserved clients’ financial health and that are sustainable in the market.

To qualify for the program, FSPs developed product proposals that addressed low-income client needs using a customer-centric lens; each of their proposed solutions is tailored to improve clients’ financial health and advance the organization’s strategic business objectives. Our partners will adapt their proposals through several rounds of user research and ongoing support from Accion.
Below is a list of our five partners, their product concepts, and goals for improving the financial health of their customers.

We’ll work alongside our partners to refine their initial concepts into customer-centric, market-ready products and services that help underserved families and small businesses improve their financial health.
Over the next 18 months, Accion and our partners will be working closely with customers, and with the FSP teams responsible for interface, application, operations, marketing and customer engagement to deliver an excellent customer experience. While we will focus on client behavior change, Accion and our partners understand that institutional change management is the real starting point.
For these solutions to promote clients’ financial health over the long-term, we will work with our partners to consider the business case for each product and the organizational changes needed to implement them. It’s only by combining our unique insights into client needs and our understanding of inclusive business models that our partners will be successful. It’s critical to look at longer-term profitability and customer lifetime value to ensure that our partners’ new products advance their long-term strategic goals; we’ll test customers’ willingness to pay for new services throughout their development and adjust product design to increase value to the customer.
These products represent significant new investments that will demand structural support, so we’ll also work to ensure that our partners have the right people, processes, and systems in place to launch and sustain the new products, helping with upskilling or capacity building as needed.
To create a financially inclusive world – to provide entrepreneurs with the means of hiring more employees, parents with the ability to save for the future, and communities everywhere with the tools they need to accelerate social and economic progress – we must develop financial products that clients trust, use, and benefit from. We’ll work alongside our Mexican and Chilean partners to create new solutions and services that help underserved families and businesses improve their financial health, and that realize the vision of a financially inclusive world. Follow us here as we keep you updated on our progress and process with our partners.
<img class="alignnone" src="http://accion-staging.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/MetLife-Foundation.png" width="247" height="115" />This brief is a part of our <a href="https://www.accion.org/accion-and-metlife-foundation-announce-expanded-partnership-to-advance-financial-inclusion/">Building Financial Capabilities and Strengthening Institutions through Customer-Centered Innovations project</a>, supported by MetLife Foundation.

“Financial health is achieved when an individual’s daily systems help build the financial resilience to weather shocks, and the ability to pursue financial goals.” Financial Health Network

Brief

<h2>The path to financial health</h2>
People around the world are continually aiming to improve their financial lives – they do so with whatever tools are available, whether formal or informal, and with whatever knowledge they have gathered. Every day, people work hard to grow their businesses, send their children to school, save, make ends meet, and troubleshoot during tough moments. Ultimately, they aspire for greater financial health and a better life for themselves and their families.
<img class="aligncenter" src="http://accion-staging.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CFSI-1.png" /><a href="https://cfsinnovation.org/">The Financial Health Network</a>, the  <a href="https://www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/">Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion</a> and <a href="http://www.dalbergdesign.com/">Dalberg's Design Impact Group</a> developed a <a href="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/FinHealthGlobal-FINAL.2017.04.11.pdf">framework of six indicators</a> for financial health in the developing world.
In order to help consumers improve their financial health, financial service providers (FSPs) can design products, tools and services that empower consumers to better understand and manage their finances and encourage them to improve financial habits. Focusing on financial health also has the potential to impact the FSP’s bottom-line: Gallup found that when customers feel that their bank <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/176534/looking-customers-financial-table-stakes-banks.aspx">looks out for their financial well-being</a>, they are much more likely to be fully engaged with the bank.

However, in order for FSPs to successfully promote financial health, they first need to understand customers’ opportunities and obstacles to improving it.

Achieving financial health in Mexico and Chile

Featured brief

Coryell Stout

A holistic approach to data protection is necessary to give users control over their information and keep it secure

Article

At Accion Venture Lab, we work with fintech startups, most of them in emerging markets. The majority of their customers haven’t worked with any kind of financial service provider before, and so our portfolio companies are the first (and probably sole) holder of these individuals’ financial information. What’s more, many fintech startups have developed innovative ways to use alternative sources of data for determining customers’ creditworthiness, so in addition to records on assets, business revenues, and payment history, the company may also have mobile phone records, housing information, and so on.

In the rush of launching a new fintech, protecting client data may not be top of mind. But this data is both valuable and sensitive — and any fintech firm is only one data breach away from losing customer confidence. We advise our portfolio companies to take steps to safeguard their customers’ data sooner rather than later — and certainly before a crisis occurs. For inclusive fintechs, protecting customers is even more important because of the vulnerable populations they serve. For a smallholder farmer, microentrepreneur, or any other low-income individual, a data breach that drains a savings account, damages a credit score, or exposes confidential information is not just an annoyance — it can be an insurmountable setback.

So, where to begin? To help answer that question, we’ve developed a <a href="https://www.accion.org/data-protection">Data Protection resource</a> that will guide you through the process of assessing your company’s risks, understanding the various policies, protocols, and practices you can adopt to address those risks, and taking steps to implement a plan that fits your company’s needs.

We use the term “data protection,” as it encompasses both data privacy and data security. Data privacy focuses on which parties have authorized access to user data, and for what purpose. The data’s owner should always have control over what information is available and understand how it is to be used. On the other hand, data security relates to the systems in place to keep unauthorized entities from accessing and exploiting the data. So a complete data protection plan will cover everything from user transparency to technical solutions to regulatory compliance.

Our Data Protection resource contains not only a thorough explanation of how and why to put a data protection plan into place, but also an assessment to identify your company’s most urgent needs, a template to use in developing a data policy, options for taking this on in-house or hiring specialists to help, and much more. You’ll learn how often to update your plan, how to foster a staff-wide culture that supports data protection, ways to ensure your partners don’t expose you to vulnerability, and more.

And, if you do experience a data breach, the resource offers a response plan to help you identify the source of the problem, limit the damage, prevent it from happening again, and repair customer confidence.

If you’d like some extra help getting started with your data protection plan, join us for a <a href="https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/2335246549346892299">free webinar on July 30 from 9:30–10:30 am EDT</a>. We’ll walk through the resource and invite some of our portfolio company CTOs to share their experiences, discuss what they’ve learned about best practices, and answer your questions.

How startups can both empower customers and protect their data

Veteran smallholder says of Apollo Agriculture, “They have taught me so much”

Andrew Murithi Karanja studied mechanical engineering but didn’t pursue it as a career. Instead, he found himself back on the land in central Kenya his father bought over 50 years ago. “Farming is deep in me because my parents were farmers. I just found myself in farming,” he says. However, even though he loved the land and his work, he found it hard to get ahead using the same skills his parents did. “Life was difficult,” he recalls. “I used inferior seeds, used less fertilizer. The yields were poor.”

That all changed when he signed up with <a href="https://apolloagriculture.com/">Apollo Agriculture</a>, a Kenya-based fintech startup and Accion Venture Lab portfolio company that works with smallholder farmers like Andrew. Apollo helps farmers obtain the high-quality seeds and fertilizer they couldn’t afford before and also advises them on how to plant and tend the crops to maximize their yield. For Andrew, the results have been very positive. “They have taught me so much about farming,” he says. “We learned how to apply fertilizer, how to space maize, it has helped us.” He used to farm only an acre and a half of land, but with Apollo’s help, he is up to three acres and is confident he’ll soon be able to manage five. 

<img class="wp-image-19105 alignleft" src="https://content.accion.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Nakuru_0012-1024x684.jpg" alt="Andrew smiling outside of a home" width="500" height="334" />Andrew is so happy with his Apollo experience, he’s urged friends and neighbors to become customers as well. “People have learned about Apollo through me, especially my neighbors. They have seen how my farm is looking good, so I tell them about Apollo.” Now 58 years old, he plans to retire from farming in about a decade but thinks he might still want to keep working with Apollo. “I would like to retire. Then I can teach others about farming with Apollo. I cannot leave Apollo. I will continue to work with them,” he says. 

Again, reflecting on his past struggles, Andrew says, “You would have pitied us if you saw us then. The futile labor of the past is gone. Apollo boosted me and helped me to see a ray of hope. Now I am proud to be with Apollo.”

Learning new skills helped this longtime farmer thrive

Raliat Sunmonu

Introducing Accion's digital transformation framework for financial service providers

Every few years, a different technology or business solution takes off from its humble roots and goes on to radically change our world — think big data. These days it’s digital transformation that’s top of mind in every industry, including for financial service providers.

What exactly is digital transformation? Well, therein lies the rub. As much buzz as the term generates, there is often as much confusion about what exactly it means as what it entails. In truth, for all institutions, the definition lies somewhere on a spectrum. For some, digital transformation is a way to reduce costs by streamlining and automating operations, and for others, it represents the creation of digitally-enabled transformative business models that promise to deliver exponential growth and returns.

Organizations are struggling to find their way through the byzantine process of becoming more digitally mature. Even with a clear agenda, there are many challenges along the way: institutions must articulate real business value, set appropriate metrics, and ensure that their digital initiatives substantially benefit their employees as well as their customers.

At Accion, we recently embarked on an <a href="https://www.accion.org/mastercard-and-accions-partnership-to-unlock-millions-of-underserved-microbusinesses">ambitious program</a> with Mastercard to help millions of underserved microbusinesses successfully operate in — and benefit from — the digital economy. We are doing this by enabling financial service providers to run more efficiently, understand their customers better, and provide customized services that benefit those customers — including microbusinesses. This program is critical for socio-economic development because when small and micro businesses can participate in the digital economy through digital payments and other services, they can build records of transactions. These digital records, in turn, create opportunities for new financing models (e.g., <a href="https://www.accion.org/demystifying-digital-lending">digital lending</a>, <a href="https://www.accion.org/the-supply-chain-finance-opportunity">supply chain financing</a>), improvements in business operations, and growth.

In order to benefit small businesses, the institutions that serve them have to get digital transformation right. We’ve worked with institutions across the globe all of whom operate in different contexts and at various levels of operational maturity. Time and again, we’ve found that a successful approach to digital transformation required:
<ol>
 	<li>A common taxonomy: A standardized way of looking holistically at an organization from business model to culture to technology infrastructure and categorizing its position along a digital maturity spectrum.</li>
 	<li>Understanding transitions: Analyzing how an organization travels along the spectrum, across all the various dimensions. What are the critical steps to move the dial and create impact? What do the enablers look like from one phase to the next?</li>
 	<li>Adoption of fundamental principles: These principles are flexible enough to allow for differentiation and customization. They depend on the operating environment, desired outcomes and customer segments, among other factors.</li>
</ol>
These principles are the cornerstone of our <a href="https://www.accion.org/digital-transformation-framework">digital transformation framework</a> — a practical and comprehensive tool designed to help service providers navigate the complex digital landscape.

The framework outlines five critical stages of digital transformation, as well as the primary drivers and enablers that evolve to create a digitally-driven, scalable enterprise.

<img class="size-full wp-image-19120 aligncenter" src="https://content.accion.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Picture1.png" alt="Stages of digital transformation: Business as Usual &gt; Experimenting &gt; Escalating &gt; Accelerating &gt; Digital Native" width="943" height="516" />
<h2>How to use the framework</h2>
Financial Service Providers can use the framework in various ways:
<ol>
 	<li>As a diagnostic tool to determine the status of the organization along the digitization continuum. <a href="https://www.accion.org/digital-transformation-checklist">Accion’s quick assessment</a> is a good place to start. By looking at the status of specific dimensions, you can identify the least digitally mature areas and assess where most progress has been made.</li>
 	<li>You can use the framework to set your digital transformation vision and define specific maturity targets for each area. These targets will be relevant to your market, customers, budget, and organization capabilities.</li>
 	<li>As a benchmarking tool for peer-to-peer comparisons and evaluations by financial institutions and other players, such as donors, development agencies, and investors.</li>
 	<li>A handy reference for defining and prioritizing your organization’s many digital initiatives.</li>
 	<li>As a communications tool from the board to customer service staff, the framework can be used to articulate the digital transformation vision, provide context, and measure progress.</li>
</ol>
At Accion, we’re using the digital transformation framework in all these ways and more to understand, map, and accelerate the transformation journeys of our <a href="https://www.accion.org/helping-small-businesses-and-communities-thrive-with-digital-financial-services">partner FSPs</a> and their customers.

Organizations face a daunting and disruptive digital journey. Accion’s digital transformation framework provides a much-needed compass for setting clear goals, designing and prioritizing strategic initiatives, and tracking progress throughout digital maturity stages. We hope institutions will use this resource to navigate digitization. By streamlining operations and developing customer-centric digital services, the financial services industry will be able to serve customers more efficiently and effectively, including the people who have been left out of the system for too long.

Navigating digital transformation is complicated — so we made a map

Toolkits and Guides

A practical and comprehensive tool designed to help service providers navigate the complex digital landscape. The framework outlines five critical stages of digital transformation, as well as the primary drivers and enablers that are needed to create a digitally-driven, scalable enterprise. This framework can be used by financial service providers as a diagnostic tool- to determine their status along the digitization continuum, to set a digital transformation vision, or as a reference for defining and prioritizing the organization’s many initiatives.

Digital Transformation Framework

Digital transformation should be a holistic approach that supersedes any one product, business function, or initiative. It is the catalyst through which the organization evolves into an insight-driven and agile enterprise that operates efficiently at scale. This checklist provides a clear and consistent tool for organizations for use in benchmarking, assessing the current state and planning a roadmap to guide the business' digital evolution. It will help organizations quickly identify their critical gaps and assess the organization’s current state of readiness for digital transformation.

Digital Transformation Checklist

Research shows that engaged employees increase productivity and bottom-line performance while reducing turnover and costs. Although creating a corporate culture of engagement can sound elusive, an employee engagement survey is a good place to start. Employee engagement surveys ties to specific performance outcomes, so it gives a pulse read of current engagement levels and offers a way to spot areas for improvement to increase overall engagement. We’ve developed this resource to give you the right questions to ask on an employee engagement survey, and guide you through successfully launching it, analyzing results, and implementing next steps. Use this resource as a tool to manage the end-to-end process of running your next employee engagement survey.

How to successfully launch an employee engagement survey

“If the house next door burns, I don’t stress," says Lumkani fire insurance client Fundiswa

"I’ve been here in this informal settlement for 14 years,” Fundiswa explains as we visit the makeshift home she shares with her sister and their children outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Such neighborhoods, which are home to more than 1 billion of the world’s poorest people, are especially vulnerable to fire, as residents live in crowded conditions and building codes are not enforced. And when a fire does break out, residents lack the resources to rebuild. “If I had to buy everything again after a fire, it would be very hard because I don’t have a lot of money,” says Fundiswa.

<img class="alignleft wp-image-16829" src="https://content.accion.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Lumkani_0007-1024x683.jpg" alt="Lumkani IoT heat detection device" width="500" height="333" />Lumkani, a South African insurtech startup and Accion portfolio company, is offering people like Fundiswa both protection and peace of mind with its innovative fire insurance product. Clients receive a heat sensing device, which sounds an alarm if it detects fire nearby. And the insurance policy helps pay for repairs or replacements if a home does burn.

Fundiswa became a Lumkani client because she wanted to know her family and possessions would be safe in a fire. Lumkani makes the process simple for customers, says Fundiswa: “I pay and then they send me an SMS to say I’m covered for the month with the insurance.”

But even more important than the straightforward process is the sense of safety Lumkani gives its customers. “If the house next door burns, I don’t stress. I just lock my door and run, because I know I’m covered by the insurance,” says Fundiswa. “People even steal from people’s homes when there are fires, but I don’t worry about any of that because I know I’m covered, and I know I will get back what is due to me after I send my claim.”

While Fundiswa hasn’t had to worry about a fire yet, she has already seen the impact of Lumkani in her community: “I know someone who lost everything in the fires and got a voucher, and he got everything back.”

Fire insurance provides peace of mind in South Africa

Megan Peterson

Personal financial management platform Destacame enabled Andrea to build her financial health and follow her dreams

“It's really difficult when you immigrate to another country,” says Andrea del Valle. She moved to Chile from Venezuela five years ago with a vision of the future she wanted but uncertainty about how to make it work. One day, a poster for Accion partner <a href="https://www.destacame.cl/">Destacame</a> caught her eye, and when she looked it up online, she was glad to see that it offered an opportunity for online financial education. Launched in 2015, Destacame provides a suite of products that allow consumers to manage their financial life and to build their financial health. 

[caption id="attachment_17174" align="alignleft" width="500"]<img class="wp-image-17174" src="https://content.accion.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2018_Accion_Destacame_Day2__0335-1024x682.jpg" alt="Andrea del Valle in conversation with Destacame co-founder Sebastián Ugarte." width="500" height="333" /> Andrea del Valle in conversation with Destacame co-founder Sebastián Ugarte.[/caption]

Andrea explored Destacame’s offerings and seized the opportunity to build her credit history and applied for a microloan through the platform. She used the money from that loan to buy a food truck. Selling snacks and meals from her new truck helped supplement her expenses as Andrea studied natural therapy and planned for her long-term career. During this time, she was able to learn a lot from Destacame about keeping your expenditures proportional to your income and saving and investing money. “At the beginning, it seemed impossible — now I am able to keep my savings as Destacame suggests,” she says.

As Andrea’s income began to grow and she was building a positive credit history, new opportunities opened up for her. She was able to open a bank account and get her first credit card. This allowed her to achieve her dream of opening her own studio offering natural therapy — making the life she had been chasing since she came to Chile a reality.

After immigrating to Chile, she built a new life for herself

How does a corn farmer in East Africa prove their creditworthiness? A start-up has come up with a solution for connecting remote regions to the rest of the world. The only requirement? A mobile phone.

By Simon Brunner in the <a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/responsibility/dialogue/bulletin.html?WT.i_short-url=%2Fbulletin&amp;WT.i_target-url=%2Fcorporate%2Fen%2Fresponsibility%2Fdialogue%2Fbulletin.html">Credit Suisse Bulletin</a>
“Show me your credit rating and I’ll tell you who you are,” is the unwritten rule of the economic mainstream: If a global company, a small village shop, a home buyer or even an entire country wants to borrow money, they must first provide proof of their assets and income. But how can a farmer in rural Kenya provide reliable financial information when such information depends in large part on his harvest?
Apollo Agriculture, a start-up founded in Nairobi in 2016, wants to solve this problem with the help of remote sensing technology and data science. Apollo uses machine learning models to build credit profiles for their customers, using alternative data sources. This includes inferences from satellite imagery of customers’ fields, as well as self-reported and behavioral data gathered during the customer enrollment process. Apollo then provides approved customers with a package of farm inputs, advice, and insurance, on credit that is customized to the size of their farms. This means that farmers in the Kenyan city of Nakuru, for example, can access the quality seed and fertilizer they need to increase their yields and are protected in case of drought.
Co-founder and CEO Eli Pollak has ambitious plans: “Our business is helping small-scale farmers make more money on their farms. We see fantastic opportunities to help farmers expand and achieve higher returns, including higher profitability crops, more crop diversification, irrigation, and access to markets.”

<h2 class="p2">Accion Venture Lab </h2>
As part of its Financial Inclusion Initiative, Credit Suisse supports Venture Lab, the seed-stage investment arm of Accion, an NGO and pioneer in the area of financial inclusion. Venture Lab provides startup capital and support to innovative start-ups that facilitate, improve, and reduce the cost of access to financial services for people living in poverty. Apollo Agriculture is part of <a href="https://www.accion.org/how-we-work/invest/accion-venture-lab/">Accion’s portfolio. </a>

<h2 class="p1">Improving realities</h2>
A conversation with Laura Hemrika, the Global Head of <a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/responsibility/economy-society/focus-themes/financial-inclusion.html?WT.i_short-url=%2Ffinancialinclusion&amp;WT.i_target-url=%2Fcorporate%2Fen%2Fresponsibility%2Feconomy-society%2Ffocus-themes%2Ffinancial-inclusion.html">Corporate Citizenship &amp; Foundations at Credit Suisse</a>

<h4 class="p1">Q: Laura Hemrika, what does Credit Suisse seek to achieve through its Corporate Citizenship activities?</h4>
A: Through our work, we seek to contribute to a more inclusive future where all people can both access the resources and develop the financial, entrepreneurial, and other skills they need to thrive in the economy and society. We focus on the topics of financial inclusion, financial education, and future skills, and partner with NGOs and social enterprises transforming the realities of thousands of people worldwide.

<h4 class="p1">Q: Why did Credit Suisse choose to support Accion’s Venture Lab?</h4>
A: Venture Lab has a very successful approach to identifying innovative new financial inclusion business models and helping them reach scale. Thanks to their smaller size, presence on the ground close to investees, and international team with deep experience in building financial inclusion and tech businesses, they are better placed to do so than we are, and are a great complement to our strengths. They provide early-stage investment capital — which can be difficult to obtain, especially for start-ups in emerging markets — and work closely with entrepreneurs to help build their companies. These companies are the future of financial inclusion, merging big data, new technology, and new models to deliver financial services to new customer segments, especially low-income people in developing countries.

<h4 class="p5">Q: What support does Credit Suisse provide to help partners achieve sustained growth and impact?</h4>
A: Our partners need not only capital but also expertise to grow and achieve a greater social impact. We, therefore, complement our grant funding with the knowledge and expertise of our employees through a number of employee engagement programs. Whenever valuable, we also try to connect our partners to other Credit Suisse resources, such as our clients and business colleagues, or to our other partners. Together we can achieve an even bigger impact.
A version of this post appeared previously in the <a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/responsibility/dialogue/bulletin.html?WT.i_short-url=%2Fbulletin&amp;WT.i_target-url=%2Fcorporate%2Fen%2Fresponsibility%2Fdialogue%2Fbulletin.html">Credit Suisse Bulletin</a>.

Loans with the help of satellite images

Jose built his construction and transport business with help from Socremo

Jose grew up in Maputo, Mozambique, and still lives there. He’s the kind of person who, when he sees the need for something, tries to do it himself. He trained as a civil engineer and worked in mining, but he left to start his own business. “We started selling building materials,” he says. “But then we felt we needed transportation, so we entered into the transport area and started transporting for other companies. After that, we felt we needed space for people to stay, so we built a guesthouse. Now we have 38 rooms.”

He’s tried working with various banks over the years, and he’s found Accion partner <a href="http://www.socremo.com/">Socremo</a> to be the best fit for his needs. Socremo is the <a href="https://www.accion.org/plan-bring-small-businesses-in-mozambique-support">leading microfinance bank in Mozambique</a>, offering a broad range of individual lending products, deposits, and insurance, and Jose was able to find what he needed to grow his business. “First I had a loan with another bank, then my sister told me about Socremo. So I went there, and in two weeks’ time I had the money,” he says. “Other banks took a long time to approve the loan. With Socremo you feel at home. They take care of us,” he adds.

Pointing out how the city has developed around him, he’s proud to have been part of that growth. “When we first came here, it was just bush,” he says. “There were no homes with electricity. So we set up our own transformer and started supplying power, as well as water. We’ve repaired roads and built a road over the river for free.” His plans aren’t slowing down as he looks for new ways to serve the community and keep his business growing. “I want to build a shopping center, and then put a hotel in the back,” he says. “We love these people and love helping them.”

<img class="size-large wp-image-18996 aligncenter" src="https://content.accion.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Socremo_Clients_0019-1024x683.jpg" alt="Jose standing beside his red truck" width="1024" height="683" />

Turning obstacles into opportunities to build a business and improve a community

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We harness the power of digital technology to

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We harness the power of digital technology to create a financially inclusive world.

We focus on global challenges

Feeding Families

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