February 2023
23Feb

Leveraging Fintech To Drive Financial Inclusion: Strategies And Best Practices

Financial inclusion (i.e., the availability and accessibility of financial services for individuals and businesses) is a fundamental goal for governments and organizations around the world. Despite progress in recent years, there are still many individuals and communities that lack access to basic financial services such as savings and credit. Fintech, or financial technology, has the potential to play a major role in addressing this problem by making financial services more accessible and affordable for those who need them most. One...

February 23, 2023
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17Feb

Gig economy report 2022

By Pascale Moreau The balance between flexibility, autonomous working and social protection has been a long time discussion within the gig economy and its complexities have kept legislators busy in recent years. As a result, the draft European Directive on Platform work is one of the most discussed topics of the year. It introduces various criteria which - if applicable - could result in a legal presumption of employment for the worker. In this year’s PwC Legal’s 2022 Gig Economy...

February 17, 2023
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16Feb

Flexibility And Earning Potential, Two Lures Of The Gig Economy

We’ve been talking about the gig economy in the United States, which, by the end of 2022, had 70 million gig workers—the most in the world—and how this mode of working might tie in with inclusive capitalism. The choice to work freelance comes with pluses, as we found, and some minuses too. Most of the deficits take the form of the loss of financial security nets. Despite some isolated efforts on the part of U.S. lawmakers to give gig...

February 16, 2023
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02Feb

Most Kenyans lack a saving scheme – RBA

Close to 14 million workers mainly in the informal sector do not have any form of savings, according to the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA). The authority is warns that this will have far reaching consequences in future as the number of poor retirees with no savings hits the streets. According to Jackson Ngotho, a director with RBA, close to 13.9m Kenyans have no form of savings towards their retirement, the majority being in the informal sector. He noted that of the 3.5...

February 2, 2023
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January 2023
26Jan

Ghana. SSNIT to launch informal sector inclusive campaign

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) intends to launch a campaign to expand its coverage to include self-employed individuals. In an interview with KMJ on Prime Morning on Wednesday, the Public Affairs Manager of the institution, Charles Akwesi Garshong, revealed that every individual in the country is entitled to a pension. However, SSNIT is unable to capture everyone due to the low level of interest of people in the scheme. After negotiating with private sector stakeholders for the past years,...

January 26, 2023
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December 2022
29Dec

India. PFRDA proposes bringing gig workers into pension fold

India's pension fund regulator has recommended the federal government introduce a UK-like pension scheme for the country's gig workers, a move aimed at bringing about 90% of the overall workforce into the pension fold, its chairman told Reuters. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), which manages over $102 billion in assets, has proposed that workers at food and cab aggregators be automatically enrolled into the National Pension Scheme (NPS), Chairman Supratim Bandyopadhyay said in an interview on Tuesday. The...

December 29, 2022
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08Dec

The Underpensioned Index 2022 Edition

By The Pensions Policy Institute This report, the third in the series, provides an updated version of the Index, alongside recent data illustrating changes, particularly in the labour market and pension saving, that have been experienced by underpensioned groups since the first Index. Recognising that the current economic landscape is challenging, some of these changes may reflect current circumstances rather than long-term trends, and some of the policies that may be suggested as potential remedies to the underpensioned challenge may not be appropriate to enact during the...

December 8, 2022
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08Dec

Platforms Disrupting Reputation: Precarity and Recognition Struggles In The Remote Gig Economy

By Alex Wood & Vili Lehdonvirta Digitalisation and the use of algorithms have raised concerns over the future of work, the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. In this article, we draw on 70 interviews in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of gig economy platforms in producing a novel form of reputational insecurity. This insecurity is generated by platforms disrupting the traditional operation of industry reputation in freelance markets. We highlight three areas of transformation...

December 8, 2022
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07Dec

UK. More than 8.6mn missing out on workplace pension savings

More than 8.6mn people from “underpensioned” groups are missing out on workplace pension savings, according to a report by Now Pensions. The report, published on December 7 in collaboration with the Pensions Policy Institute, found a number of common factors within these groups that are causing barriers to saving, including non-traditional work patterns, a lower percentage of homeownership, and being impacted by inequalities in the labour market. People from underpensioned groups – including ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, carers and single...

December 7, 2022
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02Dec

From Financial Development to Informality: A Causal Link

By Salvatore Capasso, Franziska Ohnsorge & Shu Yu Financial development reduces the cost of accessing external financing and thus incentivizes investment in higher-productivity projects that allow firms to expand to the scale needed to operate in the formal economy. It also encourages participants of the informal sector to join the formal sector to gain access to credit and financial services. This paper documents two findings. First, countries with less pervasive informality are associated with greater financial development. Second, the impact...

December 2, 2022
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