CGAP
The CGAP is a Washington, DC- based think tank promoting financial inclusion . It is supported as an international public-private partnership by around 30 national and international development organizations and company-related foundations from the fields of finance and IT. The declared overall goal is to improve the lives of the poor. CGAP stands in the seldom used long form for Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (German: Consulting group for the support of the poor). The CGAP wants to achieve its goal by investigating and promoting commercial business models with which the financial, IT and telecommunications industries can reach as many people as possible with digital financial services, especially poor people.
The World Bank in Washington provides the offices and the secretariat for the CGAP, but the administrative and financial structure is independent of the World Bank. In addition to state and intergovernmental development organizations (including KfW, giz and the Ministry for Economic Cooperation from Germany), foundations from large companies in the financial and IT sectors in the USA are significant members (Citi Foundation, Dell Foundation, Gates Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Metlife Foundation, Omidyar Network). The CGAP Executive Committee has been chaired by Jason Lamb from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since April 2019.
History and development of the program priorities
The CGAP was founded in 1995 under the somewhat different name Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (German: Advisory group to support the poorest) to promote and control the microcredit industry. The self-set goals were to promote the institutional development and commercialization of the industry and to improve the regulatory environment. In the early 2000s, the CGAP changed to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor. There is no explanation of the name change in public space.
Founding members were the World Bank and nine other government and international development organizations. The initiator and main financier is the World Bank, even if its share of the budget fell continuously and fell below 20 percent in 2013.
The CGAP played a key role in establishing the term financial inclusion and formulating the associated agenda. Starting in 2008, the CGAP increasingly replaced the previously almost exclusively used term microfinance (microfinance) with the term financial inclusion. This describes the increased use and improvement of all people's access to cashless, especially digital financial services in the formal financial sector.
In 2010, at the invitation of the G20 group, the CGAP played a key role in drafting the strategy paper for the G20's [Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion] (GPFI).
The new terminology in the objective should also express a change in focus in the program, which was related to microcredit overindebtedness crises in India, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Morocco, Nicaragua and Pakistan, among others. These broke out from around 2008 because the commercial microfinance providers very aggressively pushed expensive loans into the market without adequately checking the solvency of their poor customers. Therefore, in future the priority for CGAP should no longer be so much access to credit and other services, but rather the responsible provision of these services.
Cooperations and membership overlaps
The CGAP is a main implementation partner of the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) of the G20.
In 2012, CGAP members from the area of corporate foundations and the CGAP member United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) founded the Better Than Cash Alliance , which was also included among the most important implementation partners of the GPFI. The alliance promotes the digitization of payment transactions and the reduction of the use of cash under the overall objective of financial inclusion. Common core members of both groups are the UNCDF, the Gates Foundation, Mastercard Foundation, Omidyar Network and the Citi Foundation.
There are also close connections and collaborations with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), which is financed by the CGAP member Gates Foundation. AFI is also an implementation partner of the GPFI. The network for top managers of central banks and financial supervisory authorities in developing and emerging countries aims to support them in improving the access to and use of modern, cashless financial services for those previously underserved.
Many governments and international organizations are members of several of the groups mentioned. The German development aid organization giz provides the AFI's secretariat and is a member of the CGAP.
Individual evidence
- ↑ CGAP: About Us. Accessed August 8, 2019 .
- ↑ Governance. CGAP, accessed August 8, 2019 .
- ↑ CGAP: Annual Report FY 2018 . P. 33
- ^ Jason Lamb of Gates Foundation Named New Chair of CGAP's Executive Committee. CGAP, March 24, 2019, accessed August 8, 2019 .
- ↑ About CGAP. In: Wayback Machine Archive. CGAP, March 1, 2000, accessed August 8, 2019 .
- ↑ CGAP Phase IV Mid-Term Evaluation. Revised Report. Universalia, April 2012, accessed August 8, 2019 .
- ↑ CGAP: Annual Report 2008 . and CGAP: Annual Report 2009
- ↑ CGAP: Annual Report 2010 . P. 4
- ↑ CGAP: Annual Report 2010 . P. 6
- ↑ Better Than Cash Alliance, accessed August 8, 2019.
- ^ Alliance for Financial Inclusion: About Us , accessed August 8, 2019.