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Despite significant financial sector changes in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, commercial banks' financial performance has remained weak, unproductive, and ineffectual in regard to the overall performance of financial revenues stability and earnings boost stream. As financial institutions struggle to maintain and boost their financial viability in the face of diminishing income, primarily as a result of an over-reliance on interest rate income, commercial banks' diversification into noninterest income has steadily expanded. As an integral part of the monetary sector, commercial institutions play an important part in the well-planned cash withdrawal from borrowers and investors, enabling various parties, investors, and banks to gain big profits. The demographic targeted by this study consisted of the 42 commercial banking financial institutions that would hold official licenses from the Central Bank of Kenya by December 2021. Using panel data methods from random and fixed effects models, the four research areas were assessed. Using panel cointegration approaches with random effect and fixed effect assumptions, the four hypotheses were assessed. According to the study findings, Fees and commissions, trading income streams, income from foreign currency, and other income diversification, all had a major positive impact on financial profitability. The study concluded that there was a positive relationship between noninterest income and the financial performance of Kenyan commercial banks, that unrelated revenue streams lower the risk of a sudden, unexpected outcome and in a diversified interest revenue stream. The study recommended that there should exist risk mitigation measures set aside through revenue diversification. Commercial banks should diversify their activities to promote profitability, confidence, develop marketing policies that will boost income earnings and businesses operations growth. Objective:The general objective of this study was to investigate how noninterest income affects the financial performance of listed commercial banks in Kenya.

We evaluate social progress on the basis of panel data on individual incomes by comparing the value of social welfare in the observed panel data to its value in a situation where individuals receive their first period income in each period. We derive necessary conditions for the welfare gain to be positive, and show how it can be decomposed in an effect of economic growth, a mobility effect and a cost due to aversion to time fluctuations given individuals’ ranks in the income distribution. The mobility effect, generated by reranking in the income distribution has two components: a cost due to time fluctuations in incomes and a benefit, due to equalization in time averaged incomes. We illustrate the analysis using CNEF data for Australia, Korea, Germany, Russia, Switzerland and the US. Our results indicate that the largest component of social progress is the equalization of time averaged income, induced by reranking. In countries with high growth (Australia, Korea and Russia), the growth effect is larger than the mobility effect, but in countries with low growth (Germany, Switzerland and the US), the opposite holds true. The poor performance of the US is explained by the large costs of income fluctuations and the way economic growth is distributed.

Land-based income streams, which include the consumption and selling of crops, livestock and environmental products, are inherent in rural households’ livelihoods. However, the off-farm cash income stream – primarily composed of migrant labour remittances, social grants, and savings and loans – is increasing in importance in many regions. This case study of 590 households from Bushbuckridge, South Africa, analyses the economic value of each of these income streams at three points: what enters the household, what is used and what is sold. Two important findings emerge. First, dependence on offfarm cash incomes is far higher than previously suggested by case studies in the area and the benefits of employment accrue to those already better educated and wealthier. This suggests that shifts in offfarm opportunities will exacerbate already deep inequalities. Second, while environmental products and crops are important for direct use, they generate insignificant cash incomes from sales. This suggests a weakening of the direct links between the local ecosystem and this society, challenging traditional notions of African rurality being intrinsically land based. Significance: Off-farm incomes such as wage labour, remittances and social grants are almost the sole source of cash for households in the study area. Even when including non-monetary incomes such as harvested produce, foraged goods and livestock products, off-farm incomes still represent the overwhelmingly largest proportion of overall household income value. This highlights the fact that South African rural economies are not consistently or primarily land based, and indicates the necessity of rural development strategies that facilitate participation in local cash economies. Otherwise, such efforts will be unable to yield broad benefits and will, instead, simply enrich those who are already better off.

Banks have resulted in strengthening their portfolio mix by diversifying their portfolios in order to eliminate risks, increase their revenue sources, remain profitable and survive the competitive environment. Diversification being the main challenge encountered by banks aims at minimizing the variability of operations by banks by reducing the concentration of deposits, loans and revenue that is generated from these activities. Income diversification aims at increasing the sources of interest as well as non- interest income, reduce interest rate risk and total unsystematic risk. Capping of rates of interest has been judged to be a threat to performance of the banking institutions in Kenya and thus a need for commercial banking institutions to strengthen by diversification their streams of income. The 43 commercial banking institutions having official license from CBK by December 2017 were the target population of this study. The study analyzed Time Series Cross Sectional unbalanced secondary panel data obtained from KNBS, World Bank website, CBK, published financial accounts statements of all the 43 commercial banking institutions in Kenya, and the Banking survey publications for fifteen years ranging from 2002 to 2017. Four hypotheses were estimated using techniques of Panel data by adoption of fixed effects and random effects. Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was used to estimate short run model. Income streams diversification had an association that was significantly positive on financial performance of commercial banking institutions in Kenya

We propose a social welfare function to evaluate a profile of income streams and compare the welfare gain of the actual profile relative to the income profile where the individual receives his first period income in each period. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the welfare gain to be positive, and show how this welfare gain can be decomposed in a pure effect of economic growth, a mobility effect and a cost due to aversion to time fluctuations given individuals' ranks in the income distribution. The mobility effect, generated by reranking in the income distribution has two components: a cost due to the time fluctuations in incomes and a benefit, due to the equalization in time averaged incomes. We illustrate the analysis using CNEF data for Australia, Korea, Germany and Switzerland. Our results indicate that the largest component of the welfare gain is the equalization of time averaged income, induced by reranking. After subtracting the cost of mobility due to the increase in time fluctuations of individual income streams, the net effect of mobility remains positive. In countries with high growth (Australia and Korea), the growth effect is larger than the mobility effect, but in countries with low growth (Germany and Switzerland), the opposite holds true.

Basic funding of data infrastructure may not keep pace with increasing costs. There is a need, therefore, to consider alternative cost recovery options and a diversification of revenue streams. In short: who will pay for public access to research data? The RDA/WDS Interest Group Publishing Data Cost Recovery for Data Centres aims to contribute to strategic thinking on cost recovery by conducting research to understand current and possible cost recovery strategies for data centres.

The objective of this paper is to understand the factors driving the location decisions of multinational corporations. The paper uses literature-review and expert-interview techniques to understand what cities can do to be best positioned to attract international capital.

The Kenya water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector has been on a long path of facilitating commercial lending to Water Service Providers (WSPs). A key component of this effort is the evolution of rating the credit risk of WSPs for local lenders. However, the trade-off in credit rating WSPs is to provide the best credit analysis to help lenders assess the creditworthiness of WSPs, yet have a system that is simple and affordable enough to replicate on an annual basis. To solve this trade-off, the Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB) and the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank have created a Creditworthiness Index for the WSPs in Kenya. In lieu of performing a full shadow rating analysis, which is much more thorough yet also more time-consuming and costly, the Creditworthiness Index provides a simplified snapshot of the financial and operational performance of WSPs.

Economists have long known that financial services have benefits for users by allowing them to smooth consumption, save for bulky purchases, etc. But the recognition of their importance even for people with relatively low incomes those earning one to two dollars a day, for instance is relatively recent. This recognition has been spurred by a better understanding of the financial lives of the poor, and of the critical role played by uncertainty and volatility. The objective of this case study is to describe the design and implementation of WING, a Cambodian mobile-phone-based payment system. The product has been successful in providing access to formal banking to the previously unbanked in Cambodia. The following sections present the problem of financial exclusion, how WING meets this problem by providing a mobile banking network, the unique aspects of WING s design compared to other products, challenges in achieving technology adoption and other constraints faced by the product, and how WING has responded to these challenges throughout implementation. Finally, the case study presents lessons learned and behavioral applications for future products.

This country note is produced is part of The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment andFinancing Initiative (PCRAFI). The geographic spread of the Cook Islands poses logistical problems for any necessary post-disaster relief and response efforts. The events of 2005 demonstrated that the Cook Islands is extremely vulnerable to the threat of tropical cyclones (TCs): in the two months of February and March 2005, TCs Meena, Nancy, Olaf, Percy, and Rae swept the country. The Cook Islands is expected to incur, on average, about NZ$6 million (US$4.9 million) per year in losses due to tropical cyclones. In the next 50 years, the Cook Islands has a 50 percent chance of experiencing a per-event loss exceeding NZ$97 million (US$79.5 million. The Cook Islands has a proactive approach to disaster risk financing and insurance (DRFI), which is supported by the upper echelons of government. In January 2011, the prime minister in his role as chair of the National Disaster Risk Management Council requested that the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management look at ways to become self-reliant in initial disaster response and generate new income streams for investment in a fund specifically for disaster management response and recovery. The Cook Islands has available a maximum amount of NZ$5.6 million (US$4.6 million) in the form of contingency funds and catastrophe risk insurance to facilitate disaster response. A number of options for further improving the Cook Islands financial protection against disasters are presented for consideration: (a) the development of an integrated DRFI strategy; (b) investigation of using contingent credit to access additional liquidity post-disaster; (c) development of an operations manual for post-disaster budget mobilization and execution; and (d) the identification of assets to be included in an insurance program for critical public assets.

This book focuses on how the demand for microfinance can be met on a global scale. It documents the contributions of institutions and of people who have led the development of commercial finance for the poor, and it analyzes the principles on which the microfinance revolution is based. In sum, this work offers a detailed overview of the development of microfinance over the past 20 years; a global view of microfinance in the developing world (largely excluding Eastern Europe); a thesis on the future path of microfinance; a coherent theory about microfinance--why it works when so many other development interventions fail; detail on a number of important microfinance topics--such as informal moneylending and savings; an important study on, and lessons from Indonesia, with detailed analysis of Bank Rakyat Indonesia; and, brief studies of many other microfinance institutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.