OUR STORY
OMNIS Finclusion Foundation
Globally 1.4 billion people lack access to financial services such as a
simple bank account. Some of the key challenges in being able to
access a financial service account lie in not having formal
identification or being able to reliably prove one’s identity. Another
challenge with financial inclusion is that of information asymmetries.
Marginalized consumers, including those in the lowest income stratas,
and particularly women, micro and small entrepreneurs, informal
workers and those living in rural communities, are often “information
poor.” These segments lack information that traditional financial
service providers (FSPs) look for, such as pay stubs, bank balances,
sales accounting records, collateral etc. These consumers do have
financial footprints (alternative financial data) that, if leveraged, would
enable FSPs to offer more customized and tailored financial services
to meet the demands of these specific segments.
The Omnis Finclusion (OFI) Foundation is registered as a nonprofit in
the United States. Our mission is to build enabling financial
infrastructure that will allow greater financial inclusion for all, and
especially those who are excluded from traditional financial markets,
by removing systemic barriers such as the ability to effectively prove
one’s identity or lack of financial behavior information.
Omnis Finclusion Foundation is implementing the Omnis Digital
Platform (ODP), financial infrastructure that enables financially
underserved people to share, in a secure manner, their valid
credentials and alternate financial history information with financial
service providers (FSPs). Read more about ODP here.
We are currently setting up our project to deploy in Honduras, where
we have conducted extensive market research and developed strong
stakeholder relationships. Our objective is to provide ODP as digital
public infrastructure that can be used across the market and
eventually across the region. Our platform will enable underserved
individuals and in particular women, to collect and then share their
financial histories with FSPs, starting with remittances received, to
facilitate access to loans to support small businesses and
entrepreneurships. By supporting investments in local jobs and
opportunities, we expect that this program will directly mitigate one of
the leading causes of migration from Honduras to the United States.
The team is currently seeking funding to support the initial stages of
setting up the Foundation and deploying the project. We are in active
discussions with potential partners and funders with a vested interest
in the market. We invite like minded partners, donors and funders to
participate in an opportunity to develop digital public infrastructure and
create real impact at scale.
Our theory of change and expected impact
Through our platform, we strive to address some of the key issues that
inhibit financial sector players from serving the unserved and
underserved population segments. Our hypothesis is that by providing
the right tools and information to these financial sector players, they
are able to make more informed decisions, lower their risk exposure
and are more willing to serve these segments. While the Omnis Digital
Platform addresses one part of the overall challenge in expanding
financial access to the underserved, to effectuate any meaningful
change, we anticipate partnering with different stakeholders, and
potentially working in a consortium, throughout any implementation.
This includes partnerships with stakeholders that have specific skills in
financial literacy and education, as well as public sector partners that
can create the right enabling environment for the implementation and
roll out of the platform at scale. For more details on our Theory of
Change, please see below.
