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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.- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Are ‘Convenience Fees’ Halting the Adoption of Digital Finance?
Policymakers, financial firms and tech companies are pushing India full-steam toward a "less-cash" society. But digital finance could be hamstrung by a low-tech anachronism: transaction fees. IFMR LEAD recently teamed up with J.P. Morgan on a pilot program involving lower-income urban and rural households in Pune, Maharashtra. The research explored just how willing customers are to pay for digital transactions, such as withdrawals and money transfers, when presented with a menu of fee options.
- Categories
- Finance
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‘Stealthy’ Saving: Building on Payroll Credit to Automate Savings
Basic savings accounts are essential to helping people build assets, and to establishing their relationship with financial institutions. But customers often fail to open or use these accounts – even when they have the money and the intention of saving it. Acreimex, a savings & credit cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico, worked with BFA to find an innovative, "stealthy" way to introduce savings to its existing payroll loan customers. The results of their pilot program were intriguing.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Financial Services for Real People: Using Behavioral Science to Boost Financial Health in Latin America
Behavioral economics illustrates how we humans often fail to plan beyond the immediate future. Over the past two years, the MetLife Foundation and behavioral economics lab ideas42 have examined the behavioral barriers standing in the way of financial health for low-income people in two pilot markets, Mexico and Chile. The two organizations have designed solutions that facilitate retirement savings, short-term savings and access to credit.
- Categories
- Finance
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Grupo Financiero Santander México Launches “Tuiio” A Financial Inclusion Program For Low Income Individuals
"Tuiio", which will have its own operating model, infrastructure and brand, is a robust financial inclusion program that will leverage technology to support the needs of Mexico's low-income segment. It aims to generate measurable social impact through productive micro-lending, a digital savings account, its own branch network, staff, ATMs, point-of-sale terminals and electronic banking.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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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.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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This Startup Lets You Use Your Extra Cash To Invest In Community Development
CNote pools individual deposits–as small as $20–and funnels them into Community Development Financial Institutions, which support low-income communities and small businesses.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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