What is the time scale of project?
Set out the proposed start and end dates for the project and project duration. The maximum period for Innovation Grant supported projects is 24 months, from receipt of the grant.

Who are EFInA’s target customers?
For EFInA funding, the target customer must be unbanked and underbanked low income Nigerians.

Who are the unbanked and underbanked? 
The unbanked are people who have no access to formal financial services (including savings, credit, money transfer, insurance, or pensions) through any type of financial organization such as commercial banks, microfinance banks, non-bank financial institutions and finance companies. The underbanked have limited access to formal financial services.

Why apply for EFInA Funding?
EFInA gives you access to a wide range of information on the Nigerian financial sector, like minded organisations and to international experts in our key focus sectors.

Description of the Project

We are seeking innovative proposals which demonstrate the potential for scalable and sustainable business models. Products/services to be offered should be profitable (over the medium and long term), affordable for the low income consumer and promotes financial inclusion in Nigeria.

Who are your target customers?
You need to specify the types of individual customers the project will be servicing and how their needs/wants relating to financial services will be met.

You need to demonstrate that you do understand the characteristics of the customers (what is likely to affect their ability and desire to take up your proposed service) and that your project has taken this into account. You need to demonstrate that you have an appropriate strategy to provide customers with an affordable and accessible service.

You need to demonstrate that you understand the economic circumstances of the customers, the difficulties that they face in accessing financial services and that you have undertaken sufficient research into the demand for your proposed product or service. It is essential that you describe how customers will benefit from accessing your service.

What geographical market will your project be targeting?
Please be as specific as possible about the geographical scope of the proposed project, specifying the geographical reach of the project in Nigeria within the funded period and the intended geographical reach after the funding period is complete.

How have you assessed the market size and demand for your proposed product or service?
The EFInA Access to Finance Survey 2008 key findings provides information on the Nigerian financial sector which can support certain aspects of your analysis. However, it is for you to demonstrate that you have undertaken sufficient research to have defined and quantified the target market and developed a sufficient understanding of the market opportunity to project the level of demand that you can expect – within the project period and beyond.

What is your proposed product or service?
In this section you should describe exactly what product service you propose to develop. You will need to explain how your service will be designed, developed and delivered to the unbanked and underbanked customers, the key features and the resulting benefits (the value proposition) for target customers.

Grant proposals must include one or more of the following key sectors with the potential to expand access to financial services for the unbanked and underbanked:

• Branchless banking
• Payments services

• Savings
• Consumer Protection
• Financial Capacity/Education

How does consumer protection fit into this grant request?
Ensuring that consumers are protected is a key criterion in our selection process. All project proposals must demonstrate knowledge of consumer protection and describe how it will be incorporated into the proposal. EFInA will consider funding within a branchless banking, savings or payments project for consumer protection efforts. 

How does financial capability/education fit into this grant request?
As with consumer protection, we expect project proposals to describe how the financial capability of unbanked potential clients will be addressed. The project should describe the kinds of activities that would be undertaken to ensure that low-income, unbanked clients have enough information to choose an appropriate, affordable product for their needs.

Can EFInA funds be used for the provision of credit or on-lending?
EFInA funds CANNOT be used for the provision of credit or on-lending. All applications for credit or on-lending will not be considered.

What aspects of the product or service make it innovative?
Innovation for EFInA means applying new ways of doing business; or, extending existing models to new markets – all of which is intended to meet the financial needs of low income people, particularly their need to safely save small amounts of money on a daily basis.

EFInA will fund innovative products and projects that:

What competition exists in the market?
You need to summarise the competition that exists in the target market that may affect the performance of your service in the market. 

How will the project be sustained after the utilisation of the Innovation grant?
Set out your plans for the product or service once the EFInA Innovation Grant support is finished – will your organisation commit to rolling out the service, or how do you intend to ensure it is sustainable over the longer term?

What project enablers/obstacles exist in the regulatory environment?
You must demonstrate that you have considered the regulatory environment in your target market and whether this will enable your project, or present obstacles. If obstacles do exist please be specific about what these are, how they might affect your project and how you will manage any impacts on the project.

Why are you not able to obtain commercial capital to support the development of this product or service (including your company’s own capital), or other sources of finance
You will need to explain why commercial finance from a bank or other sources (including internal capital allocation) is not available to fund the project. You should also be able to explain why your organisation would not under normal commercial circumstances fund the entire project.

Describe how your project team will manage the project and their capacity to implement
A significant aspect will be directed toward understanding: how the project will be implemented; that sufficient governance is provided; that a suitably qualified and empowered project manager is given responsibility for the project; and that you have sufficient systems and processes in place to manage, monitor, and report on all aspects of the project.

If you will be working in a partnership or consortium, what are the roles of other organisations?
If the project involves partners or a consortium you will need to set out clearly the roles of each partner/consortium member in implementing the project. Describe the capabilities of the team to undertake the business project successfully and if there are partners/consortium members with particular skills, their roles and inputs need to be explained clearly.

How will the project be likely to result in significant lesson learning and lesson sharing?
A key objective of the Innovation Fund is to support projects that will result in considerable lesson learning and lesson sharing – so that the development of financial services for the unbanked is rapidly accelerated more widely. Therefore, you must set out how your project will result in lesson learning and sharing.

Grant recipients are expected to participate in an active research process that analyses and documents the lessons from their innovative efforts. This process includes providing financial reports and regular updates of the project and if requested allowing EFInA’s researchers on site to collect data and conduct studies.

Grantees would also be expected to actively participate in practitioner forums, both virtual and in person, to share their experiences with other grant recipients as well as those interested in learning about providing financial services for the unbanked.

Grants will be issued in tranches; for grantees to be eligible for subsequent instalments, they must achieve the mutually agreed targets or milestones and be diligent about submitting timely reports.

APPENDICES

You are required to provide a number of appendices to support your Application. Applicants are provided with Excel templates for these appendices but these are illustrative only! Applicants must decide on the most appropriate form of planning tools to illustrate key aspects of the project. These must include the following items.

Work-plan
You need to set out the proposed timeframe for the project’s implementation. A detailed work-plan must be attached to the Application setting out all of the project activities that will be undertaken and completed utilising the project resources set out in the project budget. An example MS Excel work-plan format is provided to all applicants.

While an Innovation Grant supported project needs to demonstrate that it will be completed within a maximum of 24 months, the work-plan plan does not necessarily have to cover a 24 month period, if  the project can be effectively implemented in a shorter period.

Milestones
Key milestones for the project must be set out. These may relate to project initiation and setup, service design, market testing, implementation, or market performance. You can define the milestones you consider appropriate – in a way that demonstrates that you are in control of the key stages for review, appraisal & reporting and how these relate to the wider work-plan and budget.

Budget
The financial information required by the Committee includes detailed projections of the costs (in US Dollars) associated with implementation of the project. An example budget format is provided in MS Excel format to all applicants, but you can also set out the budget in a format that you consider most appropriate, however you must – as a minimum – provide the information included in the example. This includes:

• categorising areas of expenditure
• projecting expenditure by project quarters (three month periods)
• identifying sources of funding/resources by contributing organisation

Profit and loss (P&L) projection for the proposed service
You must provide a profit and loss projection that sets out your projection of the profit and loss for the proposed service. These figures should be distinct from the project finances supported by the Innovation Grant and should relate to the income and expenditure for the proposed product or service.