Monthly Updates — February 2019
The highlight for the month of February is InfoCorp’s trip to Bangladesh for the official signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Green Delta Insurance Company (GDIC). The occasion was witnessed by 20+ journalists from Bangladesh’s leading online, broadcast and print media, and a lively question and answer session ensued. Questions included how FarmTrek works, how farmers would benefit, how livestock insurance would be carried out, when this technology will be rolled out, and expansion plans of agricultural insurance. It was a successful session with all parties seemingly happy and excited, and expressions included, “Thank you so much for your partnership with Green Delta Insurance Co …”, “We invite you to visit our office next time.”.
Bangladesh — a land of warm hearted people
Bangladesh has been ranked 41st among the world’s largest economies in 2019, moving up two notches from last year’s. The country has also become the second biggest economy in South Asia. However, Bangladesh is still primarily a rural culture, and the gram or village is an important spatial and cultural concept even for residents of the major cities. Most people identify with a natal or ancestral village in the countryside.
The achievement corresponds with another major milestone in 2018 when “the UN Committee for Development Policy (CPD) … announced Bangladesh’s eligibility for graduation from Least Developed Country, where it has been listed since 1975, to receive status of Developing Country by 2024. … This success also brings confidence for achieving the SDGs. In the last 15 years, with limited resources, Bangladesh has witnessed one of the fastest reductions in poverty anywhere in the world. Bangladesh’s international commitments include achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which focus on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
Approximately 75 percent of the workforce is involved in agriculture, and 15 percent and 10 percent are employed in the service and industrial sectors, respectively. Bangladesh has been characterized as a nation of small, subsistence-based farmers, and nearly all people in rural areas are involved in the production or processing of agricultural goods. The majority of the rural population engages in agricultural production, primarily of rice, jute, pulses, wheat, and some vegetables. Virtually all agricultural output is consumed within the country, and grain must be imported. The large population places heavy demands on the food-producing sectors of the economy. The majority of the labor involved in food production is human- and animal-based. Relatively little agricultural export takes place.
Cattle among other livestock species available in Bangladesh are the most versatile component in relation to existing integrated agricultural farming system. These cattle are of multipurpose in providing milk, draught, meat and dung as fuel and organic fertilizer and strongly linked with the livelihood of people. About 85% of cattle of Bangladesh are of non-descript and indigenous in origin with low productivity compared to other existing exotic breeds and their crosses, but they are well adapted in the tropical harsh environment have the ability to maintain their body condition on poor quality feedstuffs and are well resistant to local diseases. Government data show that the number of cattle farms in Bangladesh has swelled to 522,000 from just over 33,000 in 2011. The industry now accounts for nearly a quarter of overall employment.
Our partner company, GDIC was established in 1986. Pioneer in non-life insurance sector of Bangladesh, GDIC is the first insurance company in Bangladesh to earn a credit rating of AAA and ST1 for the fifth consecutive year. Moreover, they have earned numerous national and international awards including UNCDF SDG award, ICSB award, ICMAB award, SAFA award, ICAB award, IADA award, ARC award, Best Employer Brands Award, Emerging Asia Award and many more. The company leads the winds of change in the insurance industry of the country in terms of service standard, innovative products and legislative restructuring. It is the first in Bangladesh to launch payment integrated digital insurance for its services. They also pioneered Bangladesh’s Weather Index-based Agricultural Insurance with an aim to mitigate farmers’ risk associated with uncertain weather changes. After a glorious journey of more than three decades, GDIC has been able to uphold the brand image as a prompt claim settler, superior service provider, and diversified product supplier — almost like a one-stop solution provider in the non-life insurance sector in the country.
Helming the business is Farzana Chowdhury, an SDG Pioneer (a business leader advancing Sustainable Development). She was recognised for the ‘Nibedita-Comprehensive Insurance Scheme’ that aligns with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on Gender Equality. When asked by the financial reporter of Daily Star about challenges to implementing FarmTrek, she responded candidly that implementation would be an uphill task given the lack of awareness among farmers, adding that “Green Delta will take initiatives to educate them about the technology.” In conversation, Farzana also shared that more than 50% of farming community in Bangladesh are women. We at InfoCorp certainly hope that this partnership can help GDIC to realise their goal to reach 2 million of Bangladesh’s 80 million women in the next 10 years and to become SDG Achievers by 2030.
“There are no miracles or shortcuts to success if we want to bring sustainable social impact to the world. Good things take time, and training, education and advocacy are key to the success of any sustainable solution.”
- Roy Lai, Founder and CEO of InfoCorp
Technical Updates: FarmTrek Loan
We are incorporating a loan module into our FarmTrek solution. The addition of loan module enables banks to issue loan that is backed by livestock as collateral. The loan agreement will be stored on the FarmTrek Network.
Up Next: Sentinel Chain
We are excited! The next major milestone in Q1 2019 is just round the corner. The team is working very hard towards it and we will be making some strategic changes to be announced before end of next month. Stay tuned!
Interesting Reads
An entertaining article with great infographics discussing “7 Major Flaws of the Global Financial System” that also talks about unbanked, published on 13th February: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/7-major-flaws-global-financial-system/
Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly has officially allowed the issuance of tokenized securities on blockchain, which include stocks and bonds, and will be taking effect later in 2019
The government of South Korea’s capital city has committed to invest 1.2 trillion won ($1.07 billion) by 2022 via an investment fund for startups, including those working with fintech and blockchain
A Brazilian investment bank — Banco BTG Pactual will back its blockchain-based token with distressed Brazilian real estate assets, with the expectation of raising up to $15 million through STO. It will leverage on the Gemini dollar as the stablecoin to power the ReitBZ token.
The new Samsung smartphone, the Galaxy S10, will include storage for private cryptocurrency keys through Samsung Knox function. Galaxy S10 is built with defense-grade Samsung Knox, as well as a secure storage backed by hardware, which houses your private keys for blockchain-enabled mobile services.
References: http://www.bd.undp.org/content/bangladesh/en/home/library/annual-reports/bangladesh-quarterly-development-update-january-to-march-2108.html
https://www.thedailystar.net/business/news/green-delta-bring-out-cattle-trackers-1702342
50% of Bangladesh’s 160 million population are women: https://youtu.be/evtMM6jDEWM
InfoCorp Technologies Pte. Ltd. is a fintech company that provides the infrastructure to accelerate financial inclusion to unbanked and underserved communities through the use of blockchain technology. It designs solutions for small bank consortiums in emerging countries to facilitate inter-bank transactions using distributed ledger technologies and provides consultancy services to clearing house and central banks on implementations and testing of real-time payment systems, and also to corporate clients on implementations and operations of distributed ledger technologies for production use.
Sentinel Chain is a blockchain-based international marketplace for cross-border financial services and the world’s first platform to accept the use of livestock as collateral. Taking a unique approach to the last mile problem of financial inclusion, the Sentinel Chain model establishes livestock provenance through the creation of livestock insurance on blockchain — the registration of livestock provenance on blockchain provides the unbanked with a new opportunity: the real possibility of accepting livestock as ‘collateral’ for loans. Sentinel Chain is a project by InfoCorp Technologies.
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