This paper builds on the publishers’ past work to create an updated “methodology for outcomes management and a set of standard outcomes indicators” that are mapped to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the targets that make up each SDG. The aim is for the indicators to be “actionable” and the methodology to be “simple” to help financial service providers (FSPs) show progress toward their social missions.
The authors’ process was to: (1) review trends in outcomes management; (2) identify challenges of managing outcomes data and potential solutions to these challenges; and (3) combine these insights with learnings in the field to create an outcome management methodology comprising of a set of targets and indicators that has been tested by both FSPs and investors. Among the recent trends are that expectations of what financial inclusion can actually achieve have changed, investors’ interest in outcomes is growing and outcomes are not yet a priority for financial service providers.
The SDGs most commonly associated with FSPs are SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG 1: No Poverty and SDG 5: Gender Equality. The authors have mapped outcome indicators to targets that comprise each of these goals. For example, the proposed indicator for SDG 8’s target 8.6 – to “substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training” – is the number of jobs created, broken down by the ages of the workers taking those jobs.
The paper also includes a checklist that investors and FSPs can use to guide FSPs in rolling out an outcomes management system that will give investors and FSPs the data they need to measure progress toward their non-financial goals.
This is a summary of a paper published by the European Microfinance Platform, Cerise and the Social Performance Task Force; March 2022; 28 pages; available at https://www.e-mfp.eu/news-and-events/new-report-outcomes-management-financial-service-providers-proposed-standard
By Sheen Gupta, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources
European Microfinance Platform homepage
https://www.e-mfp.eu/
Cerise homepage
https://cerise-spm.org
Social Performance Task Force homepage
https://sptf.info/
Sustainable Development Goals description
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
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