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Diving into the Gap: What Separates Savers from Non-Savers?
In three years, the gap between the poorest 40 percent and the richest 60 percent nearly doubled across many developing countries. Meanwhile, the gap between primary and secondary school graduates has also doubled – and these inequalities in income and education are more significant than ever in dividing savers and non-savers. Scott Graham at FINCA International analyzes the latest FINDEX numbers to explore how we can reconcile a decline in savings, while poverty is largely falling throughout the world.
- Categories
- Finance
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Fewer Poor People are Saving: What Does That Mean for Microfinance and Mobile Money?
As the world grows richer and the financial inclusion movement steams ahead, savings rates are abysmally low across the globe. In fact, over half of all adults on the planet saved nothing in the last year – neither bank deposits nor cash stuffed in drawers. In the third of a four-part series analyzing the much-discussed 2017 Global Findex, Scott Graham of FINCA International explores the savings habits of individuals worldwide – particularly in the developing world – and the implications for financial services providers.
- Categories
- Finance
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Does Digital Finance Really Address Low-Income Customers’ Needs?
Digital financial services are proliferating across the developing world, yet providers are having trouble coming up with products that meet low-income customers where they live. For instance, for a rural customer, how can a stagnant digital savings account compete with a productive egg-laying hen? Maha Khan and Annabel Schiff, representing the newly formed Mastercard Foundation Partnership for Finance in a Digital Africa, unveil new research exploring how digital financial services can meet people's needs alongside more traditional services.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment
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The Secret Ingredient in Product Design: How Crossing the ‘Emotional Gateway’ Can Boost Financial Services
Banks can be intimidating places for people who have never set up an account, let alone stepped foot in one. But people love and trust their savings groups, which are a mainstay of financial security in dozens of countries. Innocent Ephraim at the Financial Sector Deepening Trust and Daryl Collins at Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA) ask: How can formal providers offer financial services that appeal to users in the same way?
- Categories
- Finance
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As wild weather hits crops, Ethiopian women turn to savings
Increasingly erratic rain and recurring dry spells have slashed harvests and killed livestock in swathes of Ethiopia, raising fears of increased food insecurity. Women often bear the brunt of such climate pressures, experts say, particularly as they usually have less power over their lives and are chiefly responsible for feeding their families.
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- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Cross-sell Done Well’: How One Finance App Found a Balance Between Digital and Human Touch
Field officers at the Sajida Foundation, a microfinance provider in Bangladesh, knew their clients had rich financial lives, and that some held sizable savings balances to enable their goals. They also knew these clients could earn more by converting their savings to a term deposit account. Yet it was difficult for them to offer complex financial advice, or to answer questions around tiered interest rates and differentiated products. The Foundation worked with BFA to develop an Android-based app to address these issues – Ashirul Amin discusses the lessons learned.
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- Finance, Technology
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Making a Case for the Business Case: New Ways to Provide Sustainable Financial Services to Low-Income Communities
The high numbers of people who participate in informal savings groups is appealing to financial service providers – there are hundreds of thousands of active groups whose self-selected members save weekly for a year, and share their accumulated savings – but it's not easy to tap into this market commercially. BFA recommends using a business case modeler to help acquire low-income people as customers in a sustainable way.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Finance
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Why Low-Income Families Don’t Send Their Children to College. Hint: It’s Not Always About Money.
Household income is not the only limiting factor as to why children of low to upper-low income families do not attend or save for university. Significant behavioral reasons are also involved, and ESCALA, which helps families save for higher education, worked with BFA’s customer insights team to identify and develop a plan to help overcome a few of them.
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