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> Posted by Nikhil Gehani, Marketing and Communications Manager, MIX
The importance of data in strategic decision-making cannot be overstated – especially in the era of ‘big data’. Yet, as the inclusive finance community continues its efforts to shift more people from unbanked to banked, improving both data quality and data regularity remains a pressing issue. While there certainly has been progress in data and measurement overall, a more nuanced picture is needed to identify specific opportunities for industry players to increase the reach and quality of financial services for underserved populations.
Current data platforms, including the World Bank’s Global Findex and the IMF’s Financial Access Survey, are beginning to fill the gaps in national measures of financial inclusion. Now, the next iteration of financial inclusion data is needed to enable local industry actors – policymakers, regulators, and operators – to assess the gaps and opportunities at the state, district, and township-level. With that in mind, MIX’s FINclusion Lab recently sought out high-quality, subnational data to answer key questions related to supply and demand for financial services in underserved areas. Questions like: How does geographic proximity impact usage of financial services? And: How effective are non-traditional providers in increasing access to financial services in rural areas?
> Posted by Guy Stuart and Eric Noggle, Executive Director and Research Officer, Microfinance Opportunities
In our first post in this series, we described the need for an approach to financial education that was both effective and scalable, and we offered embedded education as a potential solution. Our second and third posts described how the embedded education approach works and showed its potential effectiveness by describing the improved money management behavior displayed by clients in Zambia after participating in our program. We believe that these findings also revealed the potential for a business case for delivering financial education using the embedded approach.
For a business case to exist, two things have to be true: financial service providers (FSPs) need to see a positive, bottom-line impact from an embedded program and a financing mechanism needs to exist that can compete with the current grant-based model for funding financial education.
Bottom-Line Impact
Financial education can positively impact financial service providers in a number of ways (aside from knowing that they’re empowering individuals to take control of their financial lives). Offering training could improve client retention by strengthening loyalty. It could reduce customer service requests by increasing familiarity with a banking process. But our market research suggests that the biggest potential impact is lowering write-off ratios and increasing savings balances.
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