UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOURS
BUILDING CAPABILITIES
ENABLING FINANCIAL AGENCY
UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOURS
BUILDING CAPABILITIES
ENABLING FINANCIAL AGENCY
THE FINANCIAL INCLUSION NETWORK FOR TRAINING AND ACTION (FINACT)
The Change Catalyst
The Financial Inclusion Network for Training and Action (FINACT) is a program developed by Swadhaar FinAccess and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Conceptualised as a Resource Hub for financial inclusion and action, FINACT offers a human-centric approach and actionable insights towards building financial capability and agency for women and their families in India’s underserved rural geographies.
Swadhaar FinAccess is a Section-8 organization focused on financial inclusion and the empowerment of low-income households in India. Over the past two decades, Swadhaar has built a deep expertise in the financial literacy space with a consistent objective to address key gaps in the financial services ecosystem like gender and geography.
Swadhaar’s operational network reaches out to over 2 million people annually in the marginalized rural and tribal regions of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Bihar. There, we are dedicated to imparting financial and digital literacy, facilitating product linkages, and offering guidance, with a primary focus on building financial resilience for vulnerable families, particularly women.
Empowering individuals to take charge of their finances requires a focus on building trust in the financial system, along with the confidence to undertake transactions, including digital ones. Swadhaar employs a multifaceted approach, with physical centres at the district level, trainers visiting villages and peer educators drawn from and embedded within local communities.
IMMERSIVE, ON-GROUND
INITIATIVES
FINACT builds on Swadhaar’s training experience, with ongoing research and developmental efforts to complement and enhance the existing approach. Through our work under FINACT, we will delve deeper into our target client segments, study the barriers they face, understand the enablers that have helped build confidence as first-time users of technology, and develop creative, innovative training content and processes and identify learning opportunities to complement our clients’ daily lives.
Collaborating with leading industry experts over a three-year period, FINACT seeks to develop interventions rooted in behavioural science, building a comprehensive pathway toward financial resilience and agency among a significant segment of women, and gain a deeper understanding of what motivates and drives change. The results will provide valuable insights into how the effectiveness of interventions can be increased.
Through Swadhaar’s on-ground experience, FINACT will closely link research and action to develop, test and share ideas and content. These learnings will be made available on an open source digital platform to other key sector stakeholders (Funders, NGOs, financial service providers) and to clients and trainers for training tools and self learning opportunities.
Karishma Kashyap is a 27-year-old housewife in Bandheya Village, Jharkhand. She is a housewife and seasonal labourer, while her husband is a driver. After attending a training by Swadhaar, she started taking small but significant steps to build her family’s financial resilience, by buying insurance for her family and opening a Recurring Deposit account. Motivated by the desire to do what she could to help others in her community, she joined us as a Community Volunteer.
She works in close collaboration with Swadhaar’s Field Trainers to mobilize participants for trainings, to follow up post training for product linkages, and to share information about products and services with others. Through her work, she has helped and inspired others in her community to make informed decisions about their finances, making her a beacon of positive change.
LEVERAGING A NETWORK APPROACH
Build collaborative relationships around a shared vision
Swadhaar FINACT Resource Hub
BUILDING A BRIDGE
BETWEEN SUPPLY
AND DEMAND
When Swadhaar began its work in 2005, the core issue was one of limited supply of financial services for the poor. As a result, the organization’s focus was on strengthening supply and building pathways to access. Today, the market is supply-heavy with financial services layered onto multiple digital platforms. The present-day issue is one of unpacking and understanding the demand for financial services better.
Through a network approach, FINACT from Swadhaar proposes to play the role of a resource-hub. We will work closely with organizations that have a rich experience in client behaviour and open up the demand side, removing barriers to access, by building clients’ capabilities to interpret and understand supply better.
To effectively use the existing Financial Services Ecosystem, underserved customers need to navigate various platforms and layers of access. Financial Literacy interventions such as FINACT help them to unpack, understand and successfully steer through these layers.
BRINGING FINANCIAL SERVICES CLOSER
TO THOSE WHO NEED IT THE MOST
OUR ADVISORS
ABHISHEK AGRAWAL
Chief Regional Officer
ACCION, Asia
SUGANDH SAXENA
CEO, Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE)
SUMAN SRIVASTAVA
Founder and Innovation Artist at Marketing Unplugged
OUR PARTNERS
Strong Alliances with Trusted Partners