Reports

What is justice tech? Ask three investors and you might get three different answers.

It all started with an experiment. In 2009 a small team ran an accelerator program in New Orleans, just as the city was recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Twelve local entrepreneurs gathered to share their ideas for helping the city recover – and then collectively decide which of their peers should receive startup capital.

Can fintech help mitigate the effects of systemic racism in the United States? This report highlights fintech innovation that is designed explicitly to build the financial health of low- and-middle-income communities, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities and small businesses.

Historically, innovation and private sector investment has centered on framing older adults as a problem and selling the solution to the government, healthcare system, service providers, and adult children. The market’s priorities are misaligned with what older adults want for themselves.

Fintech is reshaping the financial landscape in the Middle East and North Africa – but will it help decrease inequality in the region?

There is so much exciting innovation around financial health coming out of Europe — but virtually none of it is serving the refugee population living inside Europe’s borders.

Women entrepreneurs face greatly unequal access to the capital necessary to grow and scale their start-ups. Our new research shows that despite women leading nearly half the start-ups that participate in accelerators—entities designed to train and support the development of startups to become investment ready—this gender financing gap continues to grow.

This playbook is based on our experience working directly with more than 50 fintech startups, and holding accelerator workshops and events in six Latin American countries, including, most recently, Chile and Brazil. Fintech startups often need to build a large customer base in order to make their unit economics work — particularly when they are serving low- or middle-income consumers. We decided to write this playbook because we saw that fintech entrepreneurs in Latin America were asking us about international expansion with increasing frequency. The playbook is organized into two sections: • WHEN should you scale? The first section of the report will consider the timing of the decision to scale, including internal factors you should consider before you even decide to enter a new market. • WHERE should you scale? Next, we will look at the pros and cons of scaling to a few different countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina.

As societies across the globe grapple with increased uncertainty, from climate change geopolitical risk, or the revolution of technological progress — insurance is fundamentally changing. Technology is making insurance more affordable, accessible, and customizable than ever — reducing barriers to access for historically underserved customers (i.e. small businesses, independent contractors, lower-income consumers, etc.) and unique customer needs.

There are more than 400 startups in India today that are using technology to address civic issues. However, the civic tech sector will not become self-sustaining until venture investors understand that these startups have scalable, sustainable business models, and provide the capital that the sector needs. This report, written by Village Capital and CIIE.CO with the support of Omidyar Network India, will aim to help catalyze the civic tech sector in India by defining civic tech, identifying emerging subsectors, and sharing promising revenue models.

In 2018, Village Capital and MetLife Foundation joined with local organizations to hold a forum and competition for startups working around financial health. The forum featured a break-out session where entrepreneurs, investors and leaders in banking, insurance and finance came together to map out assets and gaps in Ukraine’s fintech ecosystem.

In 2018, the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, held the first meeting of their newly formed commission on the future of work — the first time they had held such a commission since 1983. During this first meeting, union leaders spoke about how technology is creating opportunity for American workers — new products, supply chain improvements, new jobs — while at the same time disrupting traditional pathways to the middle class. At one point AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said: “Our experience has also taught us that there is a right way and a wrong way to unleash new tools. Will we let the drivers of inequality pervert technology to foster greater economic injustice and social unrest? Or will we demand that technology improves lives and raises standards and wages across the board? This commission believes technology must be used for good, not greed.”