Daryl Collins

Dr. Daryl Collins is author of the acclaimed Portfolios of the Poor and a pioneer working at the intersection of finance and human vulnerability. In the past two decades, Dr. Collins has built a broad portfolio of work with foundations, bilateral donors, governments, NGOs and private service providers. Her work is grounded in a deep understanding of the lives of low-income and vulnerable communities across the globe, leveraging the experience of executing Financial Diaries studies in over 10 countries, including China.

Dr. Collins holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from New York University. Dr. Collins spent the last decade as Managing Director and CEO of BFA, a niche consulting practice with offices in Boston, New York, Nairobi, New Delhi and Medellin (see www.bfaglobal.com). She is now establishing a new institution to develop tech-led consumer research methods that are uniquely insightful, scalable and low cost.

By Daryl Collins

Blog

Analyzing Social Media to Spot Digital Consumer Credit Risks in India

Last year, news reports emerged of aggressive debt collection amid India's digital credit boom. New research shows that early warning signs on social media preceded the reports, highlighting the value of social media for consumer protection.
Blog

Measuring the Influence of Financial Services on Reaching the SDGs

Learn about UNCDF Impact Pathways, a tool to measure the influence of digital financial services in reaching the SDGs, in this guest blog.
Blog

Can Digital Linkages Revitalize a Tried and True Savings Model?

What would it take to link savings groups and digital financial services? A team at BFA investigated the potential tradeoffs and benefits which savings groups and potential private sector stakeholders might encounter on this journey.
Blog

Why Financial Diaries to Understand the Needs of Smallholders?

CGAP is working with Bankable Frontier Associates to conduct a financial diaries project on 90 families in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Pakistan.
Blog

What Is Keeping Kenya From Becoming More “Cash Lite”?

A couple of weeks ago, Daryl Collins and her team at BFA introduced granular, intra-day transaction data collected in the summer of 2011 across a sample of 61 urban and rural retail merchants in Kenya. The results starkly showed that cash still dominates the payment transactions in these areas, with mobile money representing being used for not even 1% of transactions. In this blog, they ask the question “What would move more customers and merchants to more cash-lite payment behavior?”