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chaimaa-rachid

Fintech Startup, JUMO Raises $55 Million to Expand its Loan Facility Across Africa - 0 views

  • “I’m excited for our next phase. This backing will help us build a better business and break new ground. The strong vote of confidence, along with the world-class tech talent we now have in the business, means we can achieve exceptional outcomes for our partners and customers.” Andrew Watkins-Ball, CEO, JUMO.
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    The startup has evolved in Asia through Pakistan and now plans to grow into new business sectors and dispatch new products in Africa and Asia.
ayoubb

Yes, Africa Can - 0 views

  • Drawing on the existing knowledge of African development from previous publications, Yes Africa Can: Success Stories from a Dynamic Continent takes an in-depth look at 26 economic and social development successes in Sub-Saharan African countries?twenty from individual countries and six that cut across the region. These stories manifest at the project, provincial, sub-national, national, or regional level and across themes, programs, and sectors. The book aims to address how Sub-Saharan African countries have overcome major development challenges. The main components of each case study include: (i) a description of the achievement and the elements that qualify the outcome as successful; (ii) an assessment of the main policies, interventions, actions, and other factors that contributed to the positive outcome; (iii) a presentation of the lessons learned and the contribution to the discourse on African development; and (iv) insights on the usability or applicability of the achievement in terms of the potential for scaling up the interventions and actions. Individual case studies also examine the role of the key stakeholders?the government, donors, or private investors?in facilitating and promoting the achievement. The studies are classified into four categories: overcoming or avoiding massive government failure, rebuilding or creating a government, rationalizing government involvement in markets, and listening to the people.
    • ayoubb
       
      MPESA
mehdi-ezzaoui

Improving Financial Outcomes with FinTech | by Flourish Ventures | Medium - 1 views

  • Pula is providing radically restructured agriculture insurance for smallhold farmers in Africa. Using satellite technology and data to provide previously uninsured landowners with a better safety net, Pula policies are free for the farmers. Premiums are paid by input companies or farm aggregators whose business interests are served by protecting farmers’ incomes.
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    Bringing Insurance to Smallhold Farmers
tahaemsd

Exploring the usage and impact of "transformational" mobile financial services: the cas... - 0 views

  • application was utilized for the cultivation of livelihood strategies. Such strategies helped residents to cope with (temporarily adjust) and recover from (longer-term shifts in livelihood strategies) stresses and shocks. It will also explain the outcomes resulting from these strategies. I
mohammed_ab

Kenyan insurtech startup Pula raises $6M Series A to derisk smallholder farmers across ... - 1 views

  • Another startup is Apollo Agriculture which raised $6 million Series A, akin to Pula. Not only did the pair raise the same round, Apollo Agriculture and Pula both deal with providing financial resources to smallholder farmers.
    • nourserghini
       
      Apollo Agriculture is another rival in the industry that is also considered as a partner and complement in the industry.
  • Pula is solving this problem by using technology and data. Through its Area Yield Index Insurance product, the insurtech startup leverages machine learning, crop-cut experiments and data points relating to weather patterns and farmer losses, to build products that cater to various risks.But getting farmers on board has never been easy, Goslinga told TechCrunch. According to her, Pula has understood not to sell insurance directly to small-scale farmers, because they can suffer from optimism bias. “Some think a climate disaster wouldn’t hit their farms for a particular season; hence, they don’t ask for insurance initially. But if they witness any of these climate risks during the season, they would want to get insurance, which is counterproductive to Pula,” said the founder in a phone call.
  • Pula, a Kenyan insurtech startup that specialises in digital and agricultural insurance to derisk millions of smallholder farmers across Africa, has closed a Series A investment of $6 million.The round was led by Pan-African early-stage venture capital firm, TLcom Capital, with participation from nonprofit Women’s World Banking. The raise comes after Pula closed $1 million in seed investment from Rocher Participations with support from Accion Venture Lab, Omidyar Network and several angel investors in 2018.
    • aminej
       
      Pula has managed to raise over 6 million $ which is good for them since they will be able to help more farmers get insurance on their products. Keeping in mind that Agricultural insurance costs 4$ in Africa compared to other places where it costs at least 1000$
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  • Agriculture insurance has traditionally relied on farm business. In the U.S. or Europe with typically large farms, an average insurance premium is $1,000. But in Africa, where smallholding or small-scale farms are the norm, the number stands at an average of $4.It is particularly telling that the value of agricultural insurance premiums in Africa represents less than 1% of the world’s total when the continent has 17% of the world’s arable land. 
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    Pula studies the risks that they might find with small scale farmers. I like this kind of behavior because you need to study every possible problem so you can outcome it the best way possible.
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    What got my attention in this article is the disparity in insurance prices (premiums) between European and African countries. We see that the premiums for insurance for African farmers are only 1% the price of insurance for European farmers. This shows the big difference in purchasing power between African and European countries.
mehdi-ezzaoui

Finnovation Africa Ethiopia Belcash - 2 views

  • As a result of their potent blend of trail-blazing technology and disruptive innovation, FinTech players have the ability to accelerate the digital transformation of financial services in Africa and, in turn, further spur the major existing banks to rapidly ramp-up their own innovative approaches to meet the financial needs of under-served markets across the continent. FinTech players are increasingly becoming an important part of the fabric of Africa’s financial services industry. In addition, the leading banks on the continent are now harnessing innovative technology to meet market needs and are also collaborating with FinTech start-ups to better connect with under-served consumers, improve financial inclusion and provide a platform to scale much faster.
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    The Digital Transformation of Banking - Driving Constructive Economic Outcomes from the FinTech Ecosystem in Africa
hindelquarrouti

The Rise of the Robo-advisor: How Fintech Is Disrupting Retirement - Knowledge@Wharton - 2 views

  • Robos came on the scene about a decade ago, and two early startups were Wealthfront and Betterment. Today, there are dozens of robos in the market, Fisch said. There are pure robo services, as well as those that offer the option of talking to a human advisor, with or without an extra fee. Since they’re automated, robos can more easily avoid conflicts of interest that could beset a human advisor, who might push investments that pay the highest commissions.
    • kenzabenessalah
       
      Having Robo-advisors in EasyEquities would prevent the risk of having conflicts with "human" advisors. Digital assistance is the key.
  • Robo fees can range from zero — if the investor has less than $10,000 to invest — to as high as 0.89% of assets under $1 million in some cases, said Brett Hammond, research leader of Capital Group. But 0.25% to 0.30% of assets is more typical, he added. (The fee is on top of the cost of the investment itself.) As for performance, it’s a mixed bag with some robos doing better than others, Hammond said. The big question is how they will do in the long run, especially during a big market crash, since they don’t have an extended track record yet. “We don’t know in a complete cycle what these [robos] are going to deliver,” he said. “The real issue is, does it improve outcomes?”
    • nouhaila_zaki
       
      This excerpt is important because, on the one hand, it introduces us to the fees that can be charged by Robo-advisors. On the other, performance is hard to measure for robo-advisors since nobody knows how the will behave in the long run and in severe circumstances i.e. a market crash.
  • Artificial intelligence is changing the world of retirement planning. By using improved datasets and algorithms to efficiently deliver solutions tailored to people’s needs, AI can help them save, invest and retire better. One of the hottest trends to emerge in this area in recent years is the use of robo-advisors. These are software programs that use the data supplied by clients to create and automatically manage their investment portfolios
    • kenza_abdelhaq
       
      The use of Robo Advisors alongside artificial intelligence could be used by different fintech companies and in different fields like for investments, portfolio management or retirement planning.
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  • One of the hottest trends to emerge in this area in recent years is the use of robo-advisors.
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    It is a very interesting strategy that of benefiting from the use of AI and its advances that include improved datasets and algorithms that efficiently deliver solutions that are appropriate to users need. One of the trend that was raised by this strategy is that of robo-advisors.
sawsanenn

When fintech met crowdfunding - AltFi - 0 views

  • It became clear that fintech companies began to prize crowdfunding three years ago. Monzo crashed our servers in 2016 when it raised £1m in 96 seconds. Last December, the now-serial crowdfunding neobank raised £20m from retail investors. 
    • kenzabenessalah
       
      Crowdfunding would be a beneficial strategy for EasyEquities to help young entrepreneurs raise money for their new investments.
  • The world’s leading fintechs are using crowdfunding to cement and enhance their relationship with their customers. The latest Unicorns report from Beauhurst, an independent analysis firm, identifies the UK’s 21 unicorn companies – those worth $1bn (around £760m) or more. Of the 21, six are fintechs, and two are digital banks: Monzo and Revolut. Both have turned to crowdfunding – at a time when they are the darlings of the tech scene and its investors – to raise capital. 
    • hichamachir
       
      Crowdfunding is becoming a very used strategy for fintechs because it's a concept that help entrepreneurs finance their projects. Also it's a concept that makes the community more connected
  • The staggering thing about Monzo’s raise – and it speaks volumes about where crowdfunding and fintech have reached – is that it did not need to raise the £20m from any of us on the street. In October – i.e. just two months shy of the raise – the bank had closed an £85m round led by VC firm Accel. Raising £20m is no walk in the park. You need to build a prospectus, which is a lengthy and expensive process. Monzo’s crowdfunding raise capped all investments at £2,000, meaning the team chose to have more investors to look after. 
    • nouhaila_zaki
       
      This excerpt uses the example of Monzo's fundraising through crowdfunding to show that the latter could be a great source of financing for fintech companies.
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  • Making consumers owners and giving them a say has become integral to how these companies run. Indeed, many are now building their own platforms to manage ownership. What does this tell us about the future? Here are businesses offering equity – not for money, not because they want to list, but to build an affinity with their customers. As these relationships evolve, both sides benefit: greater engagement – better products – more customers – growth – profit – both sides capitalise.  It could be called the democracy of building business. Technology is making this shift around the consumer possible not just in finance, but across markets. While the former has emerged as the vanguard, there are other non-tech sectors that have leapfrogged traditional ownership structures and cemented their own success. Food and beverage, historically underserved by the financial world, was an early adopter of crowdfunding. BrewDog is the poster child for this – a four-time Crowdcube funded brewery. It has 120,000 investors, aka Equity Punks, who, in its words, kick-started the craft beer revolution and, presumably, enjoy its beer. The prospect gets so much more exciting when you start to think of the markets that are hardest to disrupt, build a community around, and fight injustices: insurance, mining, the coffee industry, healthcare.
    • nouhaila_zaki
       
      Here the positive side of crowdfunding is presented and includes the ownership of customers over the businesses/brands they fo to. Crowdfunding here appears to be a great opportunity, which the article describes as the democracy of building business.
  • The world’s leading fintechs are using crowdfunding to cement and enhance their relationship with their customers. The latest Unicorns report from Beauhurst, an independent analysis firm, identifies the UK’s 21 unicorn companies – those worth $1bn (around £760m) or more. Of the 21, six are fintechs, and two are digital banks: Monzo and Revolut. Both have turned to crowdfunding – at a time when they are the darlings of the tech scene and its investors – to raise capital. 
    • ghtazi
       
      what we can say is crowdfunding is the future for fintech. using Crowdfunding will helps the fintech to have a stronger and powerful relationship with its customers.
  • To answer that, I believe we have to go back to the financial crisis. After 2008, a chasm opened up in financial markets, encouraged by a profound lack of trust. We’re well-versed with the outcomes. The banks that survived had to change their ways, and new players came onto the scene. A decade later, it is the novel relationship between these latest entrants and consumers that gives us an idea of what the future looks like: a world where any business-to-consumer company knows that sharing ownership with its customers is fundamental to long-term success. This is the cooperative movement of the twenty-first century, and it is driven by technology.
    • sawsanenn
       
      This could imply that future companies are effective for a variety of reasons. Rather than capitalizing on cost savings, piling up high-quality products and selling them cheaply, or structural brands that are more myth-based than substance-based, they will be firms that effectively utilize network effects, concentrate on being a product first, and bake their clients into everyones brand
mehdibella

Vodacom's joint M-Pesa/Safaricom platform boosts monthly transactions to $20bn - 0 views

  • Vodacom’s joint M-Pesa/Safaricom platform boosts monthly transactions to $20bn
  • This is the outcome of free peer-to-peer M-Pesa transactions, a feature introduced at the onset of COVID-19, the South African network operator said in its latest update to the market on its interim results for the six months that ended on 30 September 2020.
  • The M-Pesa initiative supported rapid platform growth and customer adoption of digital channels “to the point where the M-Pesa ecosystem now processes $20.5bn a month in transactions across our international markets, including Safaricom, and contributed R8bn in revenue in the period.”
mehdi-ezzaoui

A case-based reasoning approach to rate microcredit borrower risk in online Kiva P2P le... - 1 views

  • he adopted approach is applied and evaluated employing a selection of cases from individual loans. From this perspective, the case base and the codified knowledge about how to evaluate risks associated with a loan represent two examples of knowledge IT artifacts.
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    The authors discuss how the combination of available historical data on loans and their outcomes (structured as a case base) and available knowledge on how to evaluate the risk associated with a loan request can be used to provide the end users with an indication of the risk rating associated with a loan request based on similar past situations.
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