5a. Toolkit Linkages COVER

This toolkit offers practical guidance to financial service providers (FSP) which are already providing or intend to provide formal financial services, including digital financial services (DFS), to savings groups. Insights and lessons offered in this toolkit are based on the experiences of six FSPs, which are UNCDF’s MicroLead partners in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania. The toolkit is organized into five chapters: 1) Introduction; 2) Business opportunities and savings groups’ linkages models; 3) DFSs; 4) Business case parameters and analysis;  and 5) A step-by-step guide for FSPs. The toolkit explores various technological solutions deployed to link FSPs and savings groups; offers the value proposition of using digital technologies to enable savings groups’ linkages; and presents key considerations for services that may be digitized, such as customer onboarding, group transaction records, financial transactions, account information, and consumer empowerment. The toolkit emphasizes that FSPs need to adjust their business models, operational processes, and products and services to become more accessible and convenient to savings groups members, the majority of whom are women and low-income earners living in rural or peri-urban areas. 

FSP directors, managers, and financial officers will find this toolkit helpful. Savings group-facilitating non-governmental organizations, FinTechs, governments, and donors can also benefit from this toolkit to understand the factors that FSP should consider as they build their savings groups’ linkages.

Leave a Reply

View all comments

Related Resources

Read
Tool
Data Privacy & Security Digital Inclusion Digital Literacy Digital Transformation
1a. Preparedness COVER
Tool
Data Privacy & Security Digital Inclusion Digital Literacy Digital Transformation

DSG Toolkit: Digital Preparedness Checklist

By Lauren Hendricks, Dennis Mello, Paulina (Paula) Rudnicka
Global Communities, Women for Women International
2022

DSG Toolkit: Digital Preparedness Checklist

This checklist is designed to help implementing organizations gauge their own preparedness to digitize savings groups and to do so in a gender-responsive manner. The checklist will help implementers understand what they need to do to take on the technology, identify required training and support and address gender considerations in digitization projects. These include strategies […]
Read
Research
Digital Inclusion Digital Literacy Digital Transformation Digitization Benefits
REPORT Bridging the Divide Skills for digital financial equity and inclusion Page cropped
Research
Digital Inclusion Digital Literacy Digital Transformation Digitization Benefits

Bridging the Divide: Skills for Digital Financial Equity and Inclusion

Devex and Visa
2022

Bridging the Divide: Skills for Digital Financial Equity and Inclusion

This report showcases data-driven insights on the ways in which digital financial services, skills, and trust impact equitable and inclusive participation in the digital economy. Findings in the report show that initiatives must address the knowledge, confidence and trust needed for individuals to use the technology and services more effectively; programs are most effective when […]