Impact investment and finance
Millions of people and businesses worldwide don’t benefit from financial products and access to capital. For development to be sustainable, businesses need investment to catalyse growth in the economy and people need access to financial services to build resilience and fund life goals, such as education or establishing businesses.
Development finance institutions and private investors are increasingly providing finance to businesses operating in developing and emerging markets to generate both development impact and financial returns. In addition, low-income populations are still underserved by formal financial providers and many still do not have access to informal savings and lending mechanisms, such as savings groups.
We provide evidence on what works in financial inclusion and impact investing, assessing whether investments are additional to the market, mobilisation of finance and development impact and generating learning on what works in supporting poor people to access and use savings and lending mechanisms.
Project
Evaluation of the Dutch Development Finance Institution – FMO
Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are government-backed institutions that invest returnable capital into the private...
Project
Learning Partner for the Financial Sector Deepening Trust, Tanzania
The Financial Sector Deepening Trust in Tanzania (FSDT) adopts a market development approach towards addressing systemic...
Project
Evaluation of the development impact of British International Investment’s infrastructure portfolio
In developing and emerging markets, investments in infrastructure, such as renewable energy, roads, ports and telecoms, can...
Project
Mastercard Foundation’s Savings Learning Lab
The Savings Learning Lab supported learning among the Foundation’s savings sector portfolio programmes and the wider sector...
Publications
Report
Learning brief: savings products for low income customers
Can these be provided sustainably and at scale? Read this learning brief to find out how some financial service providers are...
Report
Savings Evidence Map
A collection of 380 studies on savings-focused financial inclusion from Mastercard Foundation’s Savings Learning Lab project.
Report
Evaluation of FMO (the Dutch Development Finance Institution)
The final report of the evaluation of FMO (the Dutch Development Finance Institution) provides insights into FMO’s...
Report
Savings and climate resilience – A review of successes and challenges in current programming
Climate change is the most urgent challenge of our time, and the impacts disproportionately affect people living in poverty.
Blogs and news
Blog
How a ‘landscape approach’ can help mobilise climate finance towards vulnerable groups and ecosystems
Our evaluation of the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development found that their framework offers an innovative solution to the...
News
Upcoming webinar! Delivering inclusive finance
Proven approaches to delivering inclusive finance: Key lessons from two large-scale financial inclusion initiatives
Blog
Adapting to changing objectives in M&E: Lessons from measuring work
As M&E practitioners, we’ve seen it happen many times. Learning and accountability objectives change during the course of a...
Blog
Why human-centered design (HCD) doesn’t always work for international development
A critical look at the use of HCD and what types of problems and organizations are best and worst suited for this method