Every time I learn a new word, suddenly it is everywhere. On billboards, coming out of the TV anchor’s mouth, and sometimes even on the back of the box of my favorite cereal. This is exactly what is happening to me now with “clients.”  Of course, I’ve known what the word means for a long [...]

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are again at the center of attention – and this is excellent news because in many countries these businesses are the backbone of the economy and they employ large numbers of people. I applaud the G-20 initiative, and more specifically the work of CGAP, to shed light on the topic [...]

Poor people’s need for domestic payments is often large, whether it is spurred by migrant labor remittances, informal support networks of friends and family, government welfare payments, or utility payments. It’s also something they are willing to pay for, partly because the alternatives for moving cash over distance – e.g., informal bus networks and hawala [...]

How difficult can it be to count how many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) there are in the world, and to estimate what their demand for financing really is? (Let’s make it a bit easier by limiting the scope of the question to their appetite for financing – no need to bother trying to [...]

Financial inclusion is expanding, bringing access to financial products and services to millions of previously unbanked, low-income consumers. Managing your money also brings risks however, many of which are difficult for even experienced consumers to handle, and much more for new market entrants. As the “access to finance frontier” is pushed ever further and new [...]

Steve Jobs once said: ‘Never ask your customers what they want, they will always mislead you’. Not the most appropriate quote for the ‘Clients at the Center’ series, but one that resonates with microinsurance providers. Many providers complain that their efforts to understand the market have often misled them. Clients are simply inconsistent in what [...]

For many years I worked as a partner at one of the world’s largest strategy consulting firms. As I specialized in consumer finance, I got to work with many of the biggest financial institutions in the world. Some of the work was mundane, but a lot of it touched on innovation. When clients asked me [...]

In 2009-10, ACCION International conducted a qualitative and quantitative study of the financial behavior of rural inhabitants in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru with the support of the IADB, AIG, and CITI Foundation. The research targeted micro-entrepreneurs and small farmers as heads of households. Here are some of the highlights. Shared aspirations. [...]

Watching this year’s Global Microcredit Summit in Spain come to an end, I am glad to see that many in the industry are ready to face the challenges that have emerged in microfinance over the last years.  A plenary session on Tuesday morning with Anton Simanowitz from IDS, Tilman Ehrbeck of CGAP, Rosheneh Zafar from Kashf Foundation [...]

Since 2002, FinMark Trust has promoted FinScope,¹ a research tool to address the need for credible information that could facilitate evidence-based financial sector development. Over the years, the tool has evolved to provide a holistic perspective of the financial sector by integrating demand-side and supply-side information, as well as incorporating special surveys on consumers and [...]

Despite growing interest in youth financial services as a means to financial inclusion, until recently there has been precious little publicly available information on what youth in developing countries want from financial institutions.  YouthSave, a consortium of four practitioner and research organizations, sheds new light on this question using market research conducted in Colombia, Ghana, [...]

There are multiple reasons for financial institutions to respond to the needs of their clients, including meeting the mission of the institution, expanding market share, and achieving long term profitability. However, whilst these imperatives are widely acknowledged, relatively few institutions systematically go about understanding the needs of their customers. One reason institutions may not prioritize [...]

When we talk about “graduation” or describe the Graduation Model as “helping the poorest find their own path out of extreme poverty,” people often assume that we are being simplistic and mechanistic. They think we are saying that the Graduation Model sets in motion an escalator through which all the poorest can start at the [...]

Using financial diaries, The Portfolios of the Poor by Collins et al. (2009) opened the eyes of many to the complexities of the financial lives of the poor.  Microfinance Opportunities (MFO) has adapted the diaries methodology and linked the transactional data the diaries produce to operational issues, such as new product development. Two financial diaries  [...]

Women think and behave differently than men when it comes to financial matters. These differences have major implications for product design and marketing strategy. Since 1999, Women’s World Banking (WWB)  has conducted market research to understand how best to serve women through microfinance. We’ve conducted over 50 studies in 23 countries, segmenting our research populations [...]

It’s been interesting to watch the microcredit sector struggle with the concept of what it means to put the client at the center of their work.  Perhaps, we should start the conversation with family finances, how the poor generate their income, and the big expenses they incur along the way.  A 2007 Oliver Wyman study [...]

A colleague of mine does not like that I keep on talking about “clients at the center.”  He thinks it sounds obvious and, worse, that it is spatially incorrect. At the center of what, he asks? My answer is simple: at the center of all decision-making. That is, all decisions that financial service providers, policymakers, [...]