AMK, a Cambodian microfinance institution with over 2,500 agents, decided a few years ago to adopt an 'agent-centric view' toward their agents and treat them as a specific customer segment. How could this approach translate to happy customers and more business for AMK? Along with 17 Triggers, a Phnom Penh-based behaviour change lab, AMK and CGAP embarked on a process known as trigger mapping to answer this question. Through trigger mapping, a financial service provider identifies pain points...

CGAP's Antonique Koning discusses her work around customer empowerment and explains why it is so critical to the success of financial inclusion. Music Credit: Podington Bear, "Peas Corps," via free music archive For more information, visit our blog: http://www.cgap.org/blog/access-active-use-need-customer-empowerment

CGAP's Eric Duflos, who has been working in East Asia and the Pacific for 20 years, reflects on what financial service providers aren't hearing: that customers want and need a better experience when it comes to digital finance. Eric explains why FSPs need to establish a stronger 2-way dialogue between customers and the providers so that the voice of the customer is heard and integrated into the way companies adapt their services. For more information, read Eric's blog...

CGAP's launch of the Financial Diaries with Smallholder Families made available thousands of data points about the intricate and complicated lives of small-scale farmers in three countries - Mozambique, Pakistan, and Tanzania. While there are many complex considerations when it comes to reaching smallholder farmers with relevant and useful financial services, ultimately it's about understanding the needs of this underserved group and applying that knowledge in order to improve their lives. In...

March 8 marks International Women's Day, and the theme for 2016 is "gender parity." This is a critical issue in financial inclusion because of the world's 2 billion 'unbanked' people, 1.1 billion are women. Almost half of women around the world lack access to basic financial services, like savings accounts, credit, or insurance. This has huge costs for families, communities and economies at large. Many barriers - both cultural and regulatory - prevent women from accessing financial services...

In this episode of the CGAP Explainer, Greg Chen discusses the opportunities and risks involved in digital credit models that reach lower-income people in developing countries. M-Shwari in Kenya is one example of how digital credit can take off - two-thirds of Kenyan adults use it, to the tune of $20 million in daily transactions. What sets digital credit apart from more conventional models? Find out more by visiting www.cgap.org/digitalcredit Music Credit: Podington Bear, "Peas Corps,"...

CGAP has just released new data on mobile money activity in Rwanda and Ghana. Surprisingly, despite very different underlying conditions, the two countries have achieved similar levels of mobile money usage. In Ghana, one in 4 adults have used mobile money in the last 90 days, and in Rwanda, the figure is one in 5. Mobile money appears to be on the cusp in these countries; what's stopping it from taking off? For more information, visit cgap.org/mobilemoneymomentum Music Credit: Podington...

In this episode of the CGAP Explainer, Kate McKee and Aude de Montesquiou discuss the Graduation Program - an approach to poverty alleviation that considers every aspect of a poor person's life. After a series of pilots, the Graduation Approach is proven to improve people's lives in many tangible ways, including increasing their amount of income, increasing the amount of food they eat, and improving people's overall health and happiness. With such positive results and supporting evidence, it...

Mystery shopping is often a tool used for market research. But financial regulators are also using this as a way to measure how their customers - especially low-income customers - are treated when they seek out financial services. In this episode of The CGAP Explainer, Rafe Mazer explains how CGAP has used mystery shopping exercises in several countries to highlight gaps between what's required by consumer protection laws and what's actually happening on the ground. Find out more at...

CGAP's Max Mattern has spent the past year testing how digital finance can fit into the lives of smallholder farmers and their families. After using human-centered design techniques and interviewing 400+ people in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Senegal, and Cambodia, research shows that blending human touch points with digital financial products may be the best solution. Whatever the case, in order to be successful, a digital financial product needs to be familiar, flexible, and tangible in order to work...