ICT and Ethical Finance: Fostering Social Innovation and Financial Inclusion

Gian-Luca Gasparini () and Aurora Prospero ()
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Gian-Luca Gasparini: SEFEA Consulting, Padua, Italy
Aurora Prospero: SEFEA Consulting, Padua, Italy

No 1911, CIRIEC Working Papers from CIRIEC - Université de Liège

Abstract: This paper describes the links between ethical and responsible finance and social innovation. The two have long been in a close relationship. Ethical and responsible finance has traditionally supported projects that face difficulties in the mainstream banking sector, fostering experimental approaches (to give but an example) to market failures of traditional welfare. Moreover, ethical and responsible finance is interested not only on the economic viability of a project to fund, but also its social and/or environmental impact.The additional dimension brought about by the impact of the activities of ethical and responsible finance is social innovation. This potentially encompass several disciplines, phenomena and social constructs, which makes it difficult to analyse. However, interest in social innovation is increasing, especially concerning digital social innovation. After the theoretical analysis, the focus shifts to the PROFIT platform, presented as a practical example of ICT response to the need for improving the financial knowledge and literacy of the citizens for better decision-making and social resilience. During the creation of the platform, its creators have taken the diversity of the potential beneficiaries into account, in order to be useful for as many social groups as possible. The paper concludes with an analysis of the digital social innovation potential of the PROFIT platform.

Keywords: ethical finance; responsible finance; social innovation; social impact; PROFIT; online platform; financial literacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A20 I22 O32 O35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fle, nep-ict, nep-pay and nep-ppm
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