There is an urgent need in India and globally to design policies to prevent over-indebtedness. But first, it must be measured. A new framework for monitoring credit markets proposes how.

This post is the first in the FinDev Blog series on financial health, introducing the concept of financial health and discussing new efforts to apply the concept in low- and middle-income countries.

Small-scale solar installations have been an important innovation to bring electricity to remote areas, but they face many risks which jeopardize their ability to provide a continuous energy supply. 

Scale2Save partners FINCA and Centenary Bank in Uganda go from competition to cooperation, sharing service-distribution infrastructure for the benefit of end-user low-income customers.

Quick responses by providers and regulators in the region helped mobile money keep growing despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Support for agent networks and more flexible on-boarding practices were key.

The PAYGo PERFORM Key Performance Indicators offer a pathway to growth and maturity for the off-grid solar industry.

More radical organizational change - in the form of self-management - is needed to solve microfinance’s optimization problem. 

Women's World Banking partnered with a major public sector bank in India to see what effect the government's COVID-19 payments had on women's account activity. 

How does women’s participation in household investment decisions accelerate access to quality water and sanitation services?

A review of the literature finds that combining microfinance services with social empowerment interventions has been effective, and that measures to reduce the financial stress associated with taking on debt could also help.