We’re thrilled to share that we launched an impact cohort of six financial inclusion-focused projects. With new support from the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth (CFIG), we’re accelerating the development of DataKind’s most impactful data science and AI solutions and revolutionizing the way individuals and businesses access and utilize financial services.
Drawing on DataKind’s extensive work in this field, CFIG’s latest funding provides a unique opportunity for DataKind to leverage expertise in data science and AI in economic opportunity.
DataKind staff and technical volunteers executed these projects in direct collaboration with our partners to ensure adoption and sustainability of the final products. We recruited 20 expert, pro bono data scientists to launch our engagements, and the teams, with specifically selected technical skills to support each project need, are working with partners. The end result? Fully co-created solutions for our partners so that they can continue to extend their reach and maximize their impact.
Check out our six projects below, and read more about how we’re executing on impact for our partners to advance financial inclusion!
CDFI Friendly America
CDFI Friendly America bridges the gap between under-financed communities across the U.S. and the Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) resources they deserve, making introductions between eager CDFIs and communities looking for financing and who currently don’t have access to CDFIs.
CDFI Friendly America has a knowledge gap of identifying where the most attractive opportunities are for matching investment to community needs. DataKind is partnering with CDFI Friendly America to use publicly available data to create geospatial analysis and indicators of potential investment viability and opportunity so CDFI Friendly America can reach another 50 communities in the next five years, leading to additional investment flows into historically underinvested communities of targeted 25M+ dollars.
Read more about our partnership here.
Inclusiv
Inclusiv helps low- and moderate-income people and communities across the U.S. achieve financial independence through credit unions. With Inclusiv’s Inclusiv/Capital, they invest in member Community Development Credit Unions (CDCUs) to strengthen their financial position and expand their impact on the low-income communities they serve.
Inclusiv lacks the ability to automatically extract, process, and perform calculations to comprehensively measure their impact on member CDCUs and the communities they serve. This impedes them from providing the right suite of financial and technical support to their members. DataKind is partnering with Inclusiv to automate the quarterly extraction of National Credit Union Administration Call Report Data and the calculations of key financial performance ratios so Inclusiv has data-driven insight to guide the financial and technical support they’re providing credit unions.
BanhJi
BanhJi provides micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across Cambodia with three core services — an accounting software, a financing platform, and a neo-banking core platform to provide support to rural savings groups and cooperatives, enabling smart decisions, inclusive access to financial services, and innovative access to working capital financing.
BanhJi is unable to bridge the gap between smallholder farmer savings groups who are seeking credit to grow their businesses and financial service providers (i.e microfinance institutions) who would like to support these groups and cooperatives. DataKind is partnering with BanhJi to use historical transactional and loan repayment data to create a financial score for each savings group through various descriptive or predictive analyses so savings groups receive more targeted support to improve their credit wellbeing.
HesabPay
HesabPay makes payments convenient, simpler, and faster between businesses and individuals across Afghanistan. They do this by providing a digital-first solution that facilitates a suite of multi-channel payments, including mobile payments, card payments, and online payments.
HesabPay currently has cursory insight into their clients, their use of the application, and their transaction-level activity, impeding their ability to understand the growth of the HesabPay network. DataKind is partnering with HesabPay to segment customers, both individual customers and humanitarian organizations, so that HesabPay can better target their financial inclusion efforts and address the specific needs and preferences of each segment. These data-driven insights will allow for the design of more relevant and accessible financial solutions, ultimately promoting greater inclusion and improving financial outcomes for their customers.
The EarthShot Prize
The Earthshot Prize unleashes urgent optimism and action by discovering, accelerating, awarding, spotlighting, and scaling global solutions that can repair and regenerate the planet. They do this by awarding an annual prize of £1 million to innovators that have and will continue to drive impact in their environmental work.
DataKind is partnering with The EarthShot Prize to leverage their internally collected nominee data to apply clustering and natural language processing. They’ll generate key insights, trends, and gaps on applications to the prize, so that the EarthShot Prize team can test and validate hypotheses about where there are sophisticated solutions, or where solutions are still needed at the nexus of the environment and Shared Economic Prosperity. This information can be a north star for philanthropists, other funders, and high net worth individuals across generations on how and where to deploy and scale funds for maximum impact in the environment world.
Fundación Capital
Fundación Capital improves the economic and financial lives of people living in social vulnerability across Latin America and Mozambique, partnering with governments and the private sector to design and deliver solutions that increase economic prospects for millions.
Fundación Capital lacks the data-driven insight to understand whether their digital products meet the needs of their clients, whether these clients are using these products regularly, and how they can predict user growth. This impacts the organization’s ability to make data-driven strategic decisions to support the evolving financial journey of their clients. DataKind is partnering with Fundación Capital to use data captured through their Lista and Con Hector digital applications to create customer segmentations so Fundacion Capital can optimize efforts and develop more contextually appropriate and community-serving products that support the ongoing financial growth of traditionally marginalized communities.
What’s next?
Want to learn more about our work in financial inclusion? Check out our commentary in Innovating for Inclusion: Advancing US Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) with Data Science. We dive into research and find potential opportunities to drive innovation forward with our additional Landscapes here. Also, keep a look out for more updates and insights from our six projects in the coming months.
Join the DataKind movement.
- Interested in supporting our work? Donate here.
- Interested in sponsoring a project? Partner with us.
- Interested in volunteering with DataKind? Look no further.
- Interested in working at DataKind? We’re hiring!
- Interested in submitting a project? Go for it!
Quick Links
- Extending the Boundaries of Economic Opportunity: DataKind Advances Work in Financial Inclusion
- DataKind Announces New Support from Google.org to Improve Economic Opportunity Using Data Science
- A Better Future for Economic Resilience
- Advancing Economic Empowerment in Communities Across the U.S.: DataKind Launches Seven New Projects
