Research with partner institutions and customers inform project interventions.
9 learning questions guide us throughout the entire process:
How and to what extent do savings allow customer to increase financial resilience?
What constitutes a viable business model for small scale savings?
To what extent do different groups of young people comprise an untapped market, and how can FSPs engage with these groups so that they can be better served?
What is the value proposition and the right marketing mix (7Ps) for particular segments of financially disadvantaged people (young people 15-30 yrs, farmers, economically active women & young mothers, social grant recipients)?
What services do different groups of customers value, prioritize and need, and why do they need these services?
How does the institutional model affect the ability to offer low balance savings services to the financially excluded?
How and to what extent does institutional change improve the service offer in small scale savings?
What are the external factors that block or facilitate financial service providers’ outreach strategies?
What are the external factors that block or facilitate customers from using financial services’?
Financial inclusion is featured as a target in eight Sustainable Development Goals.
Why is this important?
People may boost their well-being when they have access and make use of savings mechanisms like a basic account.
WSBI's journey in encouraging effective and inclusive savings
Early 2000:WSBI's research 'Perspectives' lay out global barriers to access to finance and explain how the savings and retail banking network help overcome them.
Main achievement: 1.3 billion accounts were offered globally through the WSBI network at the time.
2008: Doubling Savings Accounts programme:a seven-year global partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to drive massive outreach in 10 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
 | Main achievement: 2.2 million new and active savings account customers with 4.5 million savers reached; |
 | More than 30,000 village groups linked up through mobile technology; |
 | 2,250 service points connected digitally. |
2015: WSBI becomes a coalition partner of the Worldbank Group’s Universal Financial Access Agenda (UFA 2020) committing to 400 million new transaction accounts through the WSBI network.
Main achievement: WSBI achieves its UFA commitment in 2018 with 1.733 billion accounts.
2016: Scale2Save starts operating as a six-year partnership with the Mastercard Foundation in six countries in Africa to drive customer centric solutions for 1 million customers and becomes a partner in the Mastercard Foundation Savings Learning Lab led by Itad.
2018: Scale2Save launches its annual ‘State of the Savings and Retail Banking sector in Africa’ research series to look at the quality of savings and causes of account inactivity and dormancy.
2020: Sacle2Save starts looking at better metrics for savings as part of the e-MfP led action group.