Market System Approach | Customer Empowerment
From Vulnerability to Voice: Evidence from Ratanakiri’s Debt Stress Frontier
Key Highlights and Takeaways
Cerise+SPTF is pleased to launch its new report, From Vulnerability to Voice: Evidence from Ratanakiri’s Debt Stress Frontier that presents lessons on pressure, protection, and the reforms needed to make customer empowerment work. The report shares field-grounded evidence from Ratanakiri, Cambodia, on how borrowers experience debt stress, what helps them act more confidently, and where provider and regulatory systems still fail to convert customer effort into protection.
Date of the report: April 2026
Authors: Nitin Madan, Cerise+SPTF | Laura Foose, Cerise+SPTF | Victor de la Rey, GLS Investments | Ging Ledesma, Oikocredit International | Sok Chan, The Association of Banks in Cambodia | Heng Koy, Financial Consumer Protection Centre
Technical Assistance | Outcomes Management
Managing Outcomes in Inclusive Finance
Practical Insights from a Four-year Technical Assistance Programme Financed by AGTAF and Managed by Incofin.
Between 2020 and 2024, Incofin through AGTAF facility and the technical support from Cerise+SPTF and M-CRIL, deployed a multi-country Technical Assistance programme aimed at strengthening Social Performance Management and Outcomes Management across nine investees in Africa and Asia.
This initiative not only deepened the capacity of participating FSPs but also generated valuable, field-tested lessons for the broader sector. The article distils these practical insights for finance professionals, TA providers, and investors committed to fostering meaningful change through inclusive finance.
Date of the report: April 2026
Authors: Nawel Octave, Incofin | Célia Fernandez and Cécile Lapenu, Cerise+SPTF
Training | SEPM & social audit
Training the Leaders for Tomorrow
Cerise+SPTF mentors BNP Paribas's top talents
Since 2017, Cerise+SPTF has been collaborating with BNP Paribas (BNPP) as part of the Leaders for Tomorrow initiative, which aims to identify, develop, and promote employees who will support the transformation and implementation of the BNP Paribas Group’s strategic priorities. This initiative seeks to prepare the next generation of leaders capable of meeting new challenges for the future by developing their individual and collective leadership skills, fostering an inclusive, responsible, and agile leadership style.
This partnership was developed jointly with BNPP’s Human Resources and Group Engagement teams. The program run by Cerise+SPTF is called: "Social Performance Audit for MFI”; its objective is to train a team of “Leadership Talents” each year in social and environmental performance management and conducting social audits using SPI Online assessment tools.
A new cohort was trained and supported between October 2025 and June 2026.
Training | Environmental Performance
Série de formations sur la Gestion de la Performance de Environnementale avec Oikocredit
58 participants from 22 organizations in South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
Between November 2023 and May 2025, Cerise+SPTF conducted three online training series on Environmental Performance Management (EPM) for Oikocredit’s partner financial service providers (FSPs) in South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
The objective was to help partner FSPs identify their key environmental risks and define an adequate environmental strategy and action plan to address them. In this perspective, Cerise+SPTF proposed a participatory and pragmatic approach, where the participants were guided, step-by-step in elaborating their own environmental strategy and/or action plan, relevant to their institution.
Parcours de Protection des Clients
Driving Best Standards in Client Protection
L'approche du Groupe Advans
Advans believes that financial inclusion can only deliver on its promise of empowerment for entrepreneurs and farmers if financial services are delivered ethically, transparently, and respectfully to all clients.
As an international microfinance group working in six markets in Africa, Advans has the ambition to ensure that all its subsidiaries are applying the highest standards in Client Protection through aiming to get 100% of its network certified.
In an article, Advans discusses its achievements so far in obtaining Client Protection certification, the steps it is going through to bring all subsidiaries up to standard and key learnings from the field.
Date of the article: June 2025
Authors: Katherine Brown, Advans International
Technical Assistance | Outcomes Management
Bringing the Theory of Change of Financial Service Providers into the Business Strategy for Value Creation
Recommendations for Investors
In 2023, Cerise+SPTF joined forces with Abler Nordic, Impact Fund Denmark (formerly IFU), and Norfund to explore how investors can transform theories of change and outcomes management into actionable tools—fostering collaboration with financial institutions of all types and cultivating a culture where outcomes data drives decision-making.
Date of the report: September 2024
Authors: Cerise+SPTF (Amelia Greenberg, Cécile Lapenu, Fanny Le Maguet) and independent consultants from the SEPM Pro Network (Yamini Annadanam and Rakhat Uraimova).
Fund & Training | Green & Digital Finance
Supporting Fair Green and Digital Transition in Europe
Transform Together Fund Project with The Microfinance Centre
As part of the Transform Together Fund project, co-funded by the European Union, The Microfinance Centre and Cerise+SPTF issued up to €50,000 grants for social finance actors. With support of the grants, the social finance actors developed and tested a variety of innovative solutions – each of them aimed at helping the target group to improve their knowledge or practices in green ou digital area.
As part of the project, MFC and Cerise+SPTF developed two practical toolkits showcasing ten forward-looking organisations from across Europe – including Adie (France), Confeserfidi, Coopfin, and Microlab (Italy), FAER and Patria Credit (Romania), FDPA (Poland), Filbo/OMRO (Romania), SIS Credit (Bulgaria), and 3Bank (Serbia). Each of these institutions has implemented hands-on solutions to help micro-entrepreneurs and farmers – particularly those from vulnerable groups – strengthen their green and digital capacities.
Project duration: August 2023 – July 2025
Technical Assistance | Outcomes Management
Environmental Performance Management in practice
Examples from the Philippines - MCPI Case Studies
As part of a project in the Philippines, Cerise+SPTF and the Microfinance Council of the Philippines (MCPI) collaborated to strengthen local capacity in matter of environmental performance management in the inclusive finance sector.
The objective was to enable MCPI and local consultants to better support financial service providers in assessing and improving their environmental practices.
The MCPI published three case studies from ASHI, K-Coop et OnePuhunan to share lessons learned and inspire stakeholders’ efforts towards more responsible finance.
Date of the case studies: May 2025
Authors: The MCPI and ASHI, K-Coop and OnePuhunan.
Market System Approach | Customer Empowerment
Deepening Cerise+SPTF Engagement in Uganda
A Market Systems Approach to Promoting Customer Empowerment.
Thanks to our strong partnership with the Association of Microfinance Institutions of Uganda (AMFIU), and with funding from the European Investment Bank, Cerise+SPTF has spent the past year working to strengthen customer empowerment among users of digital financial services (DFS) in Uganda.
The first part of the project involved surveying customers in rural Uganda who are using digital savings wallets, as well as mobile money accounts. The results showed that challenges were extremely common, and that customers did not always get them resolved, for a wide variety of reasons.
Given that these findings echoed the research of others, the next part of the project was to organize a workshop with key stakeholders in the inclusive finance sector in Uganda. The workshop took place on May 15, 2024.
