the mif blog

Banks are no strangers to innovation, but are they keeping up with the times? What strategies are banks using to deal with rapid innovation in the financial industry? These topics were central to a panel on Innovation Hubs and Sandboxes at Columbia University’s 6th Annual Fintech, DFS (Digital Financial Services) & Payments Summit which took place in early June, 2017.[1] The panel had participation from Citi Fintech, Open Innovation at Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank’s New York Innovation Lab, the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, and KPMG.

When it comes to remittances, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have become an unlikely global exception. In April, the World Bank reported that the money sent by migrants to their developing home countries fell for the second year in a row in 2016, to US$429 billion, a 2.4% decrease over the previous year. The decline is remarkable because such a sustained drop in global remittance flows had not been seen for about three decades.

Se encuentra en etapa de cierre el proyecto “Ecosistema rural de servicios financieros móviles inclusivos” ejecutado por Bancolombia, iniciativa que buscaba diseñar un nuevo modelo de inclusión financiera de bajo costo, que permitirá extender los servicios financieros hacia las poblaciones rurales de difícil acceso en Colombia. 

En pasados días se llevó a cabo el evento de cierre del proyecto del Programa de Empresariado Social “Inclusión Financiera de Mujeres Microempresarias” en Armenia, Colombia dentro del marco del evento de Premiación a la Mujer microempresaria - Mujer 5, para reconocer su aporte al desarrollo económico y social desde su rol como mujer en la región cafetera de Colombia.

A few weeks ago, I was in Jamaica to visit the NEO Jamaica alliance and to speak at the 3rd International Conference on Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in the Caribbean about public-private partnerships. It is always nice to see progress firsthand and to meet with our partners after a year since the NEO alliance was launched.