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
article
Digital Inclusion Digital Transformation Digitization Benefits Digitization Risks & Barriers
Interview wih Paula Rudnicka DSG Hub Program Manager 1
article
Digital Inclusion Digital Transformation Digitization Benefits Digitization Risks & Barriers

Future Forward: Spotlight on the DSG Hub

Global Communities
2022

Future Forward: Spotlight on the DSG Hub

In this interview, Paula Rudnicka, the DSG Hub Program Manager and Sr. Technical Advisor for Gender Integration at Global Communities, shares her insights about financial inclusion, digital transformation, and the role of the Hub in promoting smart and gender-responsive digitization of savings groups.
Read
Multimedia
Digital Inclusion Digital Recordkeeping Digitization Benefits Digitization Risks & Barriers
Mercy Corps e1653014590658
Multimedia
Digital Inclusion Digital Recordkeeping Digitization Benefits Digitization Risks & Barriers

Piloting the Digitizing of Savings Groups at Mercy Corps

By Nick Meakin & Tamrat Abera
Mercy Corps
2022

Piloting the Digitizing of Savings Groups at Mercy Corps

In this short interview, Tamrat Abera explains how Mercy Corps is piloting an app from Jamii.one to digitize the record-keeping in savings groups in Ethiopia. He explains the pilot objectives, the current status of the pilot, key challenges and lessons, and plans for the next 12 months. This is the first in a short series […]