woman holding a cell phone in her hand Photo courtesy of IDEO.org

More low-income individuals are generating digital footprints through their phones than ever before. This is accompanied by emerging evidence that data trails generated by poor people can be harnessed for developing inclusive financial services. This page covers the work CGAP is doing to unlock how data can be leveraged to catalyze financial services that reach poor and underserved people at scale and in a responsible manner. 

Customer Data Trails

The knowledge products covered here provide an overview of the landscape of data trails generated by low-income individuals, especially women as well as excluded segments. Through these products we uncover where and what data is available and on whom. 

Reading Deck

Many low-income people generate rich data trails that are not being fully leveraged in the design and delivery of financial services. CGAP's reading deck puts a spotlight on the specific data trails generated by digitally included yet poor people, the sources of these data trails, and variations of data trails across different segmentations.
Blog

Women are lagging behind men in digital access and the generation of digital footprints, which can lead to further disadvantages in financial access and usage. We discuss how financial service providers and authorities can address these gaps.
Events

In this webinar, the authors will present the main findings from research on the growing availability of data trails and shed light on the gender gaps and other trends identified in the data trails of DIP people.
Blog

Many people who generate significant amounts of digital data are poor. Who are they? What sort of data are they generating? And how can it be used to make financial services more useful to them?
Blog

Brazil's rapid expansion of open finance shows its potential to transform financial services, and recent CGAP research offers valuable insights into Brazil, as well as other markets interested in implementing open finance.

Use of Data by Providers

The knowledge products covered highlight the opportunity that data opens within financial services. Specifically, how financial services providers can leverage data to design inclusive financial services by leveraging data to innovate, expand access, and improve services. 

Publication

Financial services providers that see an opportunity to reach financially excluded people in rural areas can use new technology to remotely gather and analyze data on potential customers. This guide explains foundational concepts of machine learning and how FSPs can apply those methods.
Publication

Financial services providers can improve their businesses by using segmentation to develop a more accurate understanding of their customers. This guide shows providers how they can use data analytics to understand their customers by performing more complex analyses and extracting insights that were previously hidden.
Publication

Statistical models can help lenders in emerging markets standardize and improve their lending decisions. This guide emphasizes that the effectiveness of data analytics approaches often involves building a broader data-driven corporate culture.
Publication

Microfinance institutions that successfully generate value for their business and customers through digitization anchor these efforts in business intelligence. This Technical Note outlines an approach for improving business intelligence with interventions that require minimum or no investment in technology. CGAP also offers a customer dashboard library with detailed instructions for data teams and a tutorial video.
Publication

The CGAP Customer-Centric Guide explores challenges, strategies, and actions that lead to value for the business and for the customer.

Inclusive Data Ecosystem

These knowledge products cover how data sharing frameworks like Open Finance can help advance financial inclusion. They highlight how ecosystem-related factors like regulation and infrastructure can reduce provider barriers and spur innovation.  

Publication

Open finance gives low-income consumers greater control of their personal information, helping make their data work for them, giving them access to more products at lower costs through multiple and easy-to-access channels, and allowing for remote consumer onboarding. Under open finance, with consent from the customer, banks and financial service providers (FSPs) would be required to share consumer data with other FSPs and/or third-party providers, such as fintechs. However, this unprecedented ability to move entire financial histories both empowers consumers and poses risks. For example, data

Events

This webinar features insights from CGAP research, as well as a panel discussion with experts from the Brazilian open finance ecosystem.
Blog

Brazil's rapid expansion of open finance shows its potential to transform financial services, and recent CGAP research offers valuable insights into Brazil, as well as other markets interested in implementing open finance.
Blog

Open finance gives consumers control over their personal financial data, leading to more suitable and better-targeted financial services. But this ability to move entire financial histories both empowers consumers and poses risks.
Events

In this webinar, the authors of a new CGAP Technical Note on open finance discussed how to address data protection concerns in an open finance world so that wary, low-income consumers in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs) can take advantage of what open finance has to offer.
Events

Building on CGAP’s paper, Open Banking: How To Design for Financial Inclusion, this webinar featured regulators in Latin America and Africa who are implementing or planning to implement open banking regimes in emergin

Publication

While many regulators in emerging and developing markets understand the potential benefits of open banking regimes, they are uncertain how to design them in ways that support financial inclusion. CGAP has identified 12 critical design components.
Blog

When banks and other financial institutions responsibly exchange customer data with other providers, the result is better products for low-income customers.
Blog

Although growing numbers of low-income people are entering the formal financial system, many are not yet leveraging its full value. Emerging regimes for data sharing and payments flexibility have the potential to bypass traditional financial sector development and give poor customers better products and more choices.
Events

CGAP's Ariadne Plaitakis presented what types of open banking-enabled products and business models CGAP believes would be most beneficial for financial inclusion, and how these may alleviate pain points of low-income individuals.