“We need more than good learnings on customer needs; we need to operationalize the learnings.” – Alex Counts (Grameen Foundation)
Understanding and addressing consumer needs continues to be a challenging area . Indeed, almost all the players in financial inclusion would say they are “customer-centric.” However, as we talked with stakeholders, we often heard about frustrations and debates. One area of significant effort, for example, has been to improve the process of listening to clients and turning the resulting insights into effective solutions. Design firms like IDEO, Continuum, Frog, and others have sought to bring their human-centric design methods into the financial inclusion community. There is debate on whether small tweaks or big overhauls are needed, and debate on how to understand the still-unknown customers in new BOP market segments. While there are exciting showcase projects, we have not seen scale or widespread adoption across the sector.
One trend we heard more about this year is a focus on front-line staff as uniquely positioned to both understand and influence customers. Of all employees, front-line staff are socioeconomically closest to clients. Grameen Foundation takes advantage of this proximity by equipping community-based agriculture extension workers and maternal health workers with mobile phones or tablets loaded with information they can convey to customers during their routine interactions. Employees can also be beta testers for new channels and technologies. Some organizations, for example, test new payment systems on their internal payroll system. This allows staff to identify bugs and grow familiar with the new systems, making things go more smoothly when introduction to clients begins.
FI2020 also continues to argue that understanding consumers means understanding all consumers—even the most “invisible.” In the last year, CFI has been examining the financial services needs of older people and persons with disabilities, recognizing that the market opportunity to engage with these groups is substantial—and far from saturated. Explicit attention to very-excluded groups through customer segmentation is vital to achieving full financial inclusion.
Addressing Customer Needs
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GAFIS Project Results
Gateway Financial Innovations for Savings (GAFIS) was a four-year project supported by the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and managed by Bankable Frontier Associates. The project engaged Equity Bank in Kenya, Bancolombia in Colombia, Bansefi in Mexico, ICICI Bank in India and Standard Bank in South Africa to develop savings products that make long-term business sense
for the banks while meeting poor clients’ needs. The final report, published in December 2013, noted that GAFIS banks have opened accounts serving 420,000 new low-income clients and increased the number of banking agents nearly tenfold, from 2,600 in 2010 to 25,000 in 2013. It remains unclear whether these types of products are financially sustainable for banks. However, all five banks made profound changes in areas such as product and channel design and using new information to understand and serve new client segments.
Ambush Theatre: Standard Bank’s
innovative marketing.
Financial Inclusion 2020: Round-Up 2014