NextBillion Podcasts: Q&As with Leaders in Social Business

Technology can be a double-edged sword – especially when it comes to small business lending. And for socially focused lenders serving low-to-moderate income entrepreneurs, both the risks and the rewards of alternative lending are more acute. Gina Harman, CEO of Accion’s U.S. Network discusses the organization's ambitious effort to digitize lending operations and optimize the evaluation of small business loan applicants across its national online lending platform. The conversation provides a fascinating glimpse into how well-established organizations struggle to adapt established processes to emerging technologies – without compromising their vital missions.

People are famously irrational when it comes to financial matters. We can't seem to resist wasting money on things that we know aren't beneficial. Why do we make self-defeating financial decisions, and how can we be persuaded to change them? Evelyn Stark, financial inclusion lead at MetLife Foundation, discusses the ways financial services providers are leveraging behavioral science to help their clients spend less and save more, in the latest NextBillion podcast.

Millions of Americans are facing "a shocking level" of income and expense volatility - much like what's experienced in emerging markets. That's the key finding of a new book by Rachel Schneider, Senior Vice President at CFSI, and Jonathan Morduch of New York University. Called "The Financial Diaries, How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty," the book presents insights gained from tracking the financial lives of 235 low and moderate income households for a full year, exploring in remarkable detail the ways they deal with financial insecurity. Schneider discusses the research and its implications for America's economic, social and political future in this wide-ranging interview.

An interview with Robert Netzly, the founder and CEO of the conservative Christian-focused investment firm Inspire Investing, and a leader of the "Biblically Responsible Investing" movement.

Initial public offerings have been a controversial topic in microfinance ever since the industry's early days, and rightly so. The IPOs of Compartamos in Mexico and SKS Microfinance in India showed that microfinance could be highly profitable for investors, but also sparked hyper commercialization and debt crises that rocked the sector, harming its clients and tarnishing its public image. But last year, two Indian MFIs, Equitas Holdings and Ujjivan Financial Services, had successful IPOs that garnered a very different reception. How did these offerings differ from SKS and Compartamos, and what does their success imply for future investment in microfinance? Daniel Rozas of the European Microfinance Platform and Anna Kanze of Grassroots Capital Management discuss these topics and more in NextBillion's latest podcast

The election of Donald Trump has led to quite a bit of soul searching among people on the opposite side of the political spectrum - including many in social business. A few days after the election, Jonathan Lewis, a serial social entrepreneur tireless advocate for the sector, sent out a heartfelt email to his extensive following: In it, he criticized the social business movement for ignoring or downplaying the importance of government. "The marketplace alone," he wrote, "cannot lead us to the Promised Land." We spoke with Lewis about his views on how social business should respond to the age of Trump in this frank interview ... as you might imagine, there's a bit of strong language, so listener discretion is advised.