Deadline: 16-Sep-22
The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is seeking applications for the Financial Inclusion and Agricultural Market Support Project that is designed to support the digital transformation of Myanmar’s microfinance sector through providing tailored financial and technical assistance to MFIs in building and implementing their digital strategies.
The project offers practical ways to build synergies among key stakeholders and to facilitate the coordination process within the relevant actors such as Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), fintech, mobile wallet service providers, Agritech companies, input suppliers and farmer groups. It will focus to develop the agri-value change system and expect MFIs to emphasize the financing to agricultural sectors so that primarily rural women, low-income households and small holder farmers can access working capital for their farming, enable to buy their input products and sell their crops and goods.
The project also expects MFIs to enhance their digitalization approaches to creating and delivering financial services, particularly encouraging farmers to use mobile transfer payments or digital financial services, enabling them to understand the digital products usage and providing the necessary financial knowledge, additionally coordinating to share the nutritious knowledge for rural women and farmers. It is also expected to build MFIs’ resilience and pave the path for scale.
Scope of Work
- With this project UNCDF will ensure that selected applicants apply gender lenses to their interventions. It would be important that the applicants analyze and propose ways to resolve the risks and challenges experienced by women and/or men differently, acknowledging the constraints on the ground. The applicants must ensure that women and men can benefit equally from the interventions.
- Sex and age disaggregation data of clients must be reported, where possible,
- Importantly, LIFT and UNCDF would like to highlight minority inclusiveness as a cross-cutting issue, e.g., disability, LGBT+, and other marginalized communities.
Areas of Intervention
The list provides guidance on areas that UNCDF is looking to support.
Applicants are encouraged to propose interventions that suit their business strategies within the broader remit of the RFA objectives)
- Digital Strategies
- Develop medium to long term digital transformation plan (or digital strategies as the case may be)
- Prepare workplan(s) for implementing the digital plans
- Develop and implement digital and financial services focusing on the agricultural sector
- Digital Solutions
- Implement digital payment solutions for clients
- Improve institutional and business processes using digital solutions
- Develop new or improve existing field/client-based application that provides clients easy access and multiple options of financial products and business services
- Introduce and implement a modern cloud-based core banking system if needed and digital field application that will create greater impact and drive operational efficiency
- Develop and implement data-driven decision-making process, e.g., credit scoring solutions.
- Improve ways for MFIs to leverage existing credit reporting initiatives
- Enable MFIs to partner with FinTech/ Agri-Tech/ Mobile wallets to test or scale solutions that improve value for customers, e.g., value added services to agricultural value chain clients and customer communication through chatbot.
- Customer Empowerment
- Develop and implement literacy programs through innovative channels
- Empower clients and staff through building awareness about gender-inclusivity, nutritional health, financial and digital literacy, and customer protection.
- Gender
- Conduct gender gap and market gap analysis, and build strategies to address the gaps
- Develop new content or improve existing tools to ensure the content is gender-inclusive, e.g., choice of characters, voice, service design, and case studies.
- Change Management
- Regular and ad hoc workshops/meetings aimed to prepare, equip and support MFI management and staff to manage the change effectively.
Challenges
- MFIs and wallets offer limited options for digital payments to agriculture value chain clients, it includes farmers, suppliers, and exporters. The lack of digital payment options limits these participants’ ability to take advantage of an efficient payment system, which affects their growth potential.
- Many farmers lack the knowledge and benefits of using digital payment.
- Likewise, agriculture value chain participants (input suppliers, exporters, aggregators and farmers) have limited access to digital payments services that work for all of them. Only a select bilateral agreement exists, often involving two or three participants.
Funding Information
- UNCDF’s contributions will be up to USD 300,000 for each MFI.
Geographic Focus
- The Financial Inclusion and Agricultural Market (FIAM) Support project has a nationwide scope in Myanmar.
- Given the agriculture and low-income focus, UNCDF expects the delivery to cover rural areas. The geographic focus for this RFA remains Myanmar, without any state or region preference but with a focus on agricultural and low-income client segments.
Eligibility Criteria
- Entity Registration
- The applicant/ lead applicant must be a registered MFI.
- Country of Operation
- Applicants must be a legal entity, either incorporated in Myanmar or abroad, but must have at least two years of recent operations in Myanmar.
- Relevant Operation licenses (when applicable)
- The lead applicant must be legally authorized to provide services required to perform the RFA activities.
- Consortiums
- Applicants may apply only once under this RFA, whether independently or in a consortium.
- Joint applications between market players in the target country or countries are encouraged if the solution proposed will expand delivery networks and promote rural and/or other last-mile access to beneficiaries.
- Applications from consortiums of organizations must show that the partnership was established prior to submitting their application to this RFA or for this RFA.
- The lead applicant must be a registered entity as per applicable laws and must have statutory accounts and audited financial statements for at least two operating years.
- Project Funding
- Applicants must contribute at least 30 percent of the project. Costs may include technical infrastructure, resources, and operations.
For more information, visit https://www.uncdf.org/article/7930/rfa-financial-inclusion-agricultural-market-support-myanmar