Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People: Insights from the European Microfinance Award 2024

By Sam Mendelson, November 2024.

Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People: Insights from the EMA 2024 is the latest in a series that goes back  to the beginnings of the European Microfinance Award in 2006. The idea has always been to condense the insights and best practice about this topic into a format that is accessible for those who don’t work directly within it, while extracting, via the specific cases of the  Award semi-finalists and finalists, insights on an evolving best practice that can be leveraged by others.

This year’s publication begin with a primer on the topic: what is displacement and its drivers? How is displacement related to financial exclusion? What challenges do FDPs face, and what do providers face in seeking to serve them? And what are FDPs’ financial and non-financial needs depending on their phase of displacement?

The second part of the paper pivots from challenges to solutions, combining some theoretical insights with practical case examples from the ten EMA semi-finalists, and is itself split into sections that represent three broad organisational approaches to serving FDPs, with examples from the applicant organisations: 1. Designing and delivering services for FDPs; 2. Adapting operations and strategy; and  3. Changing the context.

The paper then presents some ‘lessons learned’ (in the words of the applicant organisations themselves) and concludes with ‘Factors for success: Eight insights on advancing the financial inclusion of FDPs’ — what the e-MFP Award team see as some of the factors that underpin excellence or innovation in this most important field.

This is a significant and unique publication that combines theory and current practice and insights into a single place. We at e-MFP are very proud of it, and we hope that many different stakeholders within and beyond the financial inclusion sector can find it informative, interesting and valuable.