UNCDF kêu gọi đề xuất cho dự án nâng cao khả năng tiếp cận tài chính cho phụ nữ tại các nước: Lào, Camphuchia, Mianma và Việt Nam. THam gia dự án, các tổ chức sẽ có cơ hội nhận được tài trợ từ Quỹ phát triển tài chính liên hiệp quốc
+ SHIFT Challenge Fund Facility 2nd window February 22nd to April 15th 2016 Fostering innovative business models for women’s financial inclusion Supported by: The SHIFT Challenge Fund+ Facility second window challenges financial services providers and real economy actors to develop or scale-up innovative and sustainable business models, and cross-sector partnerships, for advancing women’s financial inclusion in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Viet Nam SHIFT SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS in the ASEAN region What is SHIFT? • SHIFT is a UNCDF managed regional programme that seeks to advance economic empowerment and market participation for low-income consumers, microenterprises and SMEs, with a specific focus on women, by unlocking financial markets access services must be designed to meet the needs of the financially excluded This includes for instance appropriate delivery channels, physical proximity, affordable costs, transparent pricing, adequate loan amount and suitable collateral requirements • One of SHIFT’s key intervention areas is a Challenge Fund Facility aiming at increased formal financial inclusion for low-income populations and micro, small and medium enterprises Financial inclusion is understood as the capacity to access a wide range of formal financial services—savings, credit, insurance, and payments—provided responsibly and sustainably by a range of providers in a well-regulated environment In order to be considered accessible, financial products and • The Challenge Fund uses innovative financing mechanisms to extend investments in last-mile financial structures, incentivising the use of innovative technology and streamlining information to improve the customer journey The SHIFT Challenge Fund will achieve this by selecting and cofunding proposals offering either an innovative approach or scaling-up an existing approach for financial services delivery in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam SHIFT SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS How does the SHIFT Challenge Fund+ Facility work? • The Challenge Fund offers incentives to the private sector to foster new business models that financial market actors would not ordinarily be prepared to pursue because the return on investment would be difficult to assess or because it would be perceived as too risky The SHIFT Challenge Fund aims to support projects for which social returns are assured, but financial returns have yet to be proven • The Challenge Fund acts as a coinvestor, providing matching grants to give innovative ideas a chance to establish that they can lead to financial returns and achieve social returns at the same time • The SHIFT Challenge Fund looks at innovative business models and at scaling up of existing business models Both approaches can be supported by the fund • The Challenge Fund seeks to support the development of sustainable and inclusive access to financial services Financial inclusion, as well as commercial sustainability of the business models are equally important to SHIFT • The Challenge Fund will finance a share of the project’s costs through a performance based grant agreement The other part of the project’s costs will be financed by the applicant as an indication of their commitment to the business model and its commercial viability Under a performance based agreement, the project’s costs are refunded to the grantee upon achievement of agreed milestones and objectives • The SHIFT Challenge Fund operates with “windows” The thematic focus of the second window is: Fostering innovative business models for women’s financial inclusion Applications for the first round of this window can be submitted between February 22nd and April 15th 2016 • The Challenge Fund allocates grants through an open competitive process with public solicitation of applications Only the best proposals and applicants with the relevant skills and experience will be selected by an independent technical experts’ investment committee The Challenge Fund seeks to address two challenges related to women’s access to financial markets: 1) Financial institutions often not consider women as attractive clients; 2) Financial institutions are not always the most suited channel to directly reach out to women as economic actors (be it consumers, employees or business owner/managers) SHIFT SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS Which challenges is the first round of the second window addressing? Women as economic actors have the potential to become a growing and profitable market group for financial institutions, provided the appropriate products and delivery models are developed • Women constitute 50 percent of the population in CLMV With more than 82 million, women represent a significant and indispensable economic force for the region’s development, yet low-income women face disproportionately high challenges to economic empowerment • Despite progress in the last decade, formal access to financial markets for women remains notably lower than for men Even when including womencentred microfinance institutions outreach, more than 70 per cent of women are excluded from the formal financial sector in CLMV SHIFT • The association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) account ownership rate for women is 48 per cent, Cambodia and Myanmar demonstrates the lowest inclusion rates for women account ownership at, respectively 10 per cent and 18 per cent Women in CLMV have demonstrated to be good borrowers, to have regular income streams, to save regularly and to be highly interested in several financial services such as insurance, remittances and money transfer • The second window’s approach to address these challenges is to define commercially attractive market segments for financial providers and to involve real economy actors (Businesses and companies producing goods and services for consumers) to reach out to women either through innovative delivery channels or through the scaling-up of existing approaches SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS What type of proposals is the Challenge Fund looking to co-finance? • The objectives of the SHIFT Challenge Fund Facility second window are to identify key market gaps to financial access for women and to foster financial innovations and initiatives of the private sector meeting these gaps SHIFT Challenge Fund’s incentives intend to enhance the risk/return assessment of financial providers for proposals that demonstrate both innovation and scalability (measured in terms of a viable business plan and outreach) • SHIFT will co-finance partnerships composed of (1) business intermediaries in the real economy to aggregate demand and (2) financial providers Business models will ideally also include (3) technology providers enabling lower transaction costs and data collection and/or (4) insurers to mitigate the risk of diversion of loans to other purposes, thereby creating a commercially attractive value proposition both for financial services providers and businesses • SHIFT invites proposals from companies and financial institutions (ideally joint proposals but it is not compulsory) describing the innovative business models or scaling up of existing sustainable business models The proposals should offer simultaneously: • Increased access to better financial services for women and women-led enterprises; (It is important to note that women should always have the choice whether they want to participate or not Transparency and choice for the clients is paramount in the fund’s evaluation of the proposals.) • An attractive value proposition for financial institutions; • Economic benefits for businesses participating in the business model; • A focus on sectors which stand out in CLMV as economically significant and with a high rate of women participation such as: agriculture and agrobusiness, textile, retail trade and the service industry (tourism for instance) Proposals in these sectors will be given priority but other sectors will also be considered; • The project idea must be implementable in 2016 – 2018 (with a project duration from one to three years) • It must be a new venture, not an existing project A scaling up project for an existing product/service can be considered a new venture as long as the scaling up project hasn’t started before being selected by the Challenge Fund SHIFT SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS What does the SHIFT Challenge Fund offer? • For this window, SHIFT seeks to fund up to USD 1.8 million for approximately 10 to 12 projects in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Viet Nam • SHIFT will provide matching grants from USD 100,000 to USD 500,000 SHIFT requires applicants to contribute from 30% to 50% (depending on the innovation factor and risk level, and with possibility to contribute a share in-kind) towards the project’s costs, thereby demonstrating the grantee’s commitment to the project and its commercial viability SHIFT • The SHIFT Facility may also broker partnerships, when possible, with other donor programmes offering complementary financial instruments such as partial guarantees • As a Challenge Fund working with the private sector, SHIFT is committed to a rapid disbursement of funds in tranches based on mutually agreed milestones (with the first tranche disbursed by the 3rd quarter of 2016) and a user-friendly application process with assistance available to applicants SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS Who is eligible to apply to the Challenge Fund second window? • • The SHIFT Challenge Fund is not a technical assistance facility It aims at financing projects with the potential to transform and strengthen the financial sector It will therefore select the most competent partners Partners with a higher participation of women in their board and/or executive management will be favoured The window will apply the following eligibility criteria: o o o o SHIFT Licensed financial institutions (Banks and non-banks financial institutions, including State-owned commercial banks or other stateowned financial institutions), registered financial services providers and companies from all sectors or the economy are eligible; Each proposal should address financial services provision for women; All proposals must meet the current national regulatory requirements; The lead applicant should have a minimum of three year of o o • operations and statutory account(s); Applicants may be registered in CLMV or foreign, provided the project benefits women’s financial inclusion in CLMV Individuals cannot apply Examples of eligible applicants are: Telecommunication providers, garment factories, input/seed suppliers, equipment suppliers/distributors; dairy groups; tourism chains; large agroprocessors and exporters, large agriculture (women) cooperatives, business incubators, energy providers, renewable energy appliances producers, local distributors, recycling plants, housing corporations, regional and multinational companies with extensive supply chains, and alternative platforms that connect women entrepreneurs to long-term capital, commercial banks, leasing companies, development banks, microfinance institutions, ICT providers and insurance companies, etc SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS Examples of attractive projects for the Challenge Fund second window The Challenge Fund is inviting all proposals and ideas meeting the criteria defined above Below are examples, for your information and inspiration, of ideas and business models that would meet the Challenge Fund requirements These are only indicative examples of ideas and concepts and the Challenge Fund will consider all proposals meeting the requirements stated in this document • • Tripartite model where (i) a garment factory (in Cambodia 90 per cent of textile workers are women) pays (a share of) salaries for interested staff on formal saving accounts in (ii) a partner financial institution Automated payrolls are simpler, quicker and less timeconsuming for businesses to handle; financial institutions would develop a regular and predictable saving stream; Women employees would have access to a safe saving mechanism and increase their chances to access loans from the financial institutions owing to a more documented financial history Adding (iii) an ICT service to enable women to check their account through mobile phones available at the factory would increase ease of access and trust in the system Tripartite model where an insurance company would offer an appropriate and standardised health insurance package to all women employees (and their children) of a large factory The insurance company gets to reach a large pool of customers with similar patterns and regular income with minimum business development costs; Women have access to a cheaper health coverage (through group sales) without the inconvenience of regular visits to pay the premium (premium could be paid from mobile phone or directly at the work place); and the SHIFT employer will enjoy lower absenteeism for sickness reasons (as demonstrated by insurance studies) • Tripartite model where a large agriculture equipment distributor teams up with a leasing company to offer leasing services to women interested in acquiring agricultural equipment This model could be upgraded to include direct payments to the leasing company from remittances (women receive on average smaller and more regular remittances that could be partly channelled to productive investment; acquisition of land, irrigation and agricultural equipment through leasing services have tremendous potential to increase agriculture productivity) • The same model could be developed to finance renewable energy appliances allowing women to dedicate more of their time to income generating activities or to (partly) channel remittances directly to productive investments such as remittances linked mortgages • Bipartite or tripartite model where a company with a large supply chain composed of (mostly) women-led MSMEs (such as an hotel chain working with caterers, cleaners, etc.) provides credit services to its suppliers to develop their activities The financial transaction can be backed up by a financial institution if required The company will enjoy stronger and more reliable suppliers (some example in the coffee sector in South America have demonstrated promising results), while the financial institution will enjoy lower lending risks thanks to regular payments and support of the company to it suppliers SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS • • • Innovative solutions on credit scoring through the collaboration of a financial institution, a mobile technical services provider and aggregators such as business incubators or national level distributors offer new avenue for quicker, cheaper and more reliable lending processes Evidence from Latin America and Africa suggests that new credit scoring models generate significantly fewer rejections of creditworthy female business owners than traditional models that rely on credit history and availability of collateral Collaboration between a financial institution and local market actors (local women cooperatives, local commodity markets, schools) to develop an agent network more adapted to women has the potential to reach out to a large segment of underserved women and to be a decisive dimension of last mile delivery of financial services to women (for example offering accessible deposit services) Leveraging big data collected through digitized services through the cooperation of telecom operators and financial institutions offers great opportunities for the development of better services for women, such as more efficient agent network management, more accurate credit scoring and product segmentation SHIFT Key dates • Applications can be sent from 22 February 2016 to 15 April 2016 Any application received after the deadline will not be considered for this round It is therefore recommended that interested parties start developing ideas and potential partnerships as soon as possible • Information workshops will be held in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Viet Nam and Myanmar in March 2016 The workshops are open to all applicants preparing an Expression of Interest SHIFT will answer questions related to the preparation of the expression of interest and the functioning of the Challenge Fund • Please check the SHIFT website (http://shift.uncdf.org/) for details regarding time and location of the events and more information about the SHIFT Challenge Fund second window • Application forms and documents will be uploaded on the SHIFT website by February 21st 2016 For further information please contact the SHIFT team at: • shift.uncdf.org • inclusivefinance.asia@uncdf.org • facebook.com/UNCDF • twitter.com/UNCDFSHIFT • #WESHIFT SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS ... check the SHIFT website (http:/ /shift. uncdf.org/) for details regarding time and location of the events and more information about the SHIFT Challenge Fund second window • Application forms and... the SHIFT website by February 21st 2016 For further information please contact the SHIFT team at: • shift. uncdf.org • inclusivefinance.asia@uncdf.org • facebook.com/UNCDF • twitter.com/UNCDFSHIFT... Fund SHIFT SHAPING INCLUSIVE FINANCE TRANSFORMATIONS What does the SHIFT Challenge Fund offer? • For this window, SHIFT seeks to fund up to USD 1.8 million for approximately 10 to 12 projects in