OUR WORK
In the villages of rural India, where dreams and hardships often
collide, there are compelling stories that embody the essence of
financial inclusion.
Nikhat, a 26-year-old seasonal wage worker lives in Raksi village, in
the Kanha Chatti region of Jharkhand. She has a bank account, but in the past, she didn’t use it often as travelling to the bank was
expensive and time-consuming.
She attended a Swadhaar training in 2022 and learnt about different
financial products and public sector schemes she could access.
Nikhat was particularly fascinated to hear about digital payment
channels that would enable her to make regular deposits and
transactions. With support from Swadhaar’s trainers, she slowly
became confident about using digital channels to save money in a
monthly recurring deposit. She also enrolled in the Atal Pension
Yojana to secure her family’s financial future.
Today Nikhat is a Financial Health Worker (FHW) with Swadhaar, keen to keep building on her own financial understanding, and also to share her knowledge and experience with others in her village.
Our Work
Our work at FINACT takes a human-centric approach towards building financial capability and agency for women and their families in India’s underserved rural geographies so that they may access, engage with, and use financial products that empower them and their families.
Through collaborations with leading industry experts, FINACT seeks to gain a deeper understanding of what motivates and drives change. The results will provide valuable insights into how the effectiveness of financial capability building interventions can be increased. Building on Swadhaar’s on-ground experience, FINACT closely links research with
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.
Over the past year, the FINACT Project team has worked closely with our partner, behaviour science experts Final Mile, to map out the set of experiments to understand our clients’ behaviours and decision-making, as well as test out elements for strengthened content and process development. Beginning with an immersive analysis of current content and processes, we identified gaps and opportunity areas to focus on, and 6 Experiment and Research Briefs were developed. These were
deployed across our Live Labs at 10 locations.
Through secondary research and stakeholder immersions, we mapped the current program and hypothesized on enablers, barriers, inflection points and influencers of the path to financial resilience, to identify gaps and opportunity areas for interventions.
We create experimental and research briefs that lay out behavioural interventions to promote engagement and usage of financial products for the key user segment, across our Live Learning Labs. These low-fidelity briefs aim to test out concepts and intervention principles and highlight data to be collected in order to track the effectiveness of our interventions.
To build an agile, iterative, “learning by doing” environment, the FINACT project uses an innovative “Live Learning Laboratory” methodology. We identified locations across Swadhaar’s operational areas that were representative of our typical client segment. We established 10 Live Learning Labs (Live Labs) at these locations where dedicated Researcher Trainers were recruited to execute the behavioural experiments. The Live Labs have been catalytic in the rapid testing and implementation of different content modules, process changes and key research initiatives. With a learning mindset, we use regular monitoring to capture all details of implementation, and are not afraid to fail, often learning as much or more from unsuccessful attempts. Rather than a linear process of research, insights, design and implementation, which is not only time-consuming but also devoid of real learnings and constraints of implementation, we implement a simultaneous process of research & design. Actionable insights that are developed and tested through this process will also be tested at scale across our networks.
Through the learnings of the Live Labs, we co-create and update the experimental and research
briefs into Design Intervention Briefs. These briefs inform the overall user experience and include
key design principles for the specific user segment.
Our learnings from these Experiments have brought to light a range of insights: the motivation and ownership that community influencers bring to a volunteer role, how to create a moment of learning at every interaction with clients, mapping the nuanced financial agency of different women to understand how that very important first step towards increased agency can look so different for each of them, and through it all, to better understand how financial literacy and training interventions can motivate, engage, support and nudge them towards these actions.
Over the 3 year project period, Swadhaar and Final Mile are designing a series of on-ground experiments that address gaps and opportunity areas across content and processes. Through an iterative, rapid testing approach, we are developing hypotheses, designing solutions, prototyping and testing them, to eventually refine and deploy at scale. We established Live Learning Labs (Live Labs) at 10 locations near our operational networks, where these experiments are being implemented, and learnings and insights are distilled using a “learn by doing” approach.
TIMELINE
INTERVENTION AREAS AND EXPERIMENT DESIGN:
FROM PRODUCT OWNERSHIP TO USAGE AND AGENCY
FINACT looks at financial literacy as a journey from “awareness to agency”. Through the intervention areas and experiment design, we aim
to build a more holistic approach wherein training interventions are primary contributors to financial literacy and inclusion and secondary
contributors to agency.
Through the experiments outlined below, we aim to refine and strengthen training interventions and provide families, and especially
women, with the tools and resources needed to make decisions about their own lives, including economic choices, education, healthcare
and family planning.
Personalized
Moments of Learning
Experiment Goals
To create personalized learning moments during 1:1 client interactions
Gaps & Opportunity Areas Addressed
Underutilization of in person touchpoints with clients to provide a ‘moment of learning’ – for pre-training interactions, to create pull for the training, for post training interactions to help build relevance and interest in product linkages.
Outcome
Increased client participation and engagement (time spent) during pre-training enrollment
Greater number of clients convert to attending trainings
Greater client engagement (e.g. time spent and asking questions) in the training
Increased client interest in financial product linkage post training
Experiment Activities
We aim to deepen 1:1 interactions with the client, by creating a ‘moment of learning’ through byte-sized personalized positive stories on achievement of a financial milestone aided by Swadhaar. Through this, to drive relevant learning, and reinforce the value of the training to ensure attendance, as well as of taking steps towards product linkages as a significant next step in their journeys.
Steps
- Developing a tool with questions to locate the person (based on formal product ownership) and tell a specific story aligned to showcase value of the training and/or product ownership
- Creation of a pamphlet to build trust, and represent the various user stories, to act as an aid for the R&T, and for knowledge to remain in the household
- Training of the R&T, on the goals, tool, and experiment
- Detailed Tracking Sheets to evaluate qualitative and quantitative actions of the R&T during the 4 week duration of the experiment
- Weekly debriefs with the R&Ts, for monitoring and feedback
- Reimagining the tool and pamphlet based on the feedback and the research activity
Learnings
- The personalised ‘moments of learning’ conveyed through the stories increased the number of people willing to attend the training, and subsequently, the engagement during the trainings. The stories and photographs made situations relatable – the feeling that “it happened to someone like me” led to end users asking questions related to their financial needs. Post training, the stories helped to recap product information from the training and serve as examples of products suited for different life cycle needs.
- We began with a hypothesis of 5 customer segments based on product usage to help R&Ts locate users within different segments. Through the experiment we learnt that 5 segments were too many for the R&Ts, and they struggled to locate the user in the initial conversation. Based on this feedback, we simplified the segmentation to make it easier for trainers to locate users across segments and focus on engagement through storytelling.
Users with lower literacy levels connected with the photographs, but found the text heavy pamphlet a little intimidating. To address this, we revised the design to include shorter stories, and added illustrations along with the photographs that conveyed goals and achievements, so that all users could follow the stories better.
Across the Live Labs, the Researcher Trainers (R&Ts) used Cue Cards to help locate users across segment and narrate a relatable story during 1-1 interactions.
Across the Live Labs, the Researcher Trainers (R&Ts) used Cue Cards to help locate users across segment and narrate a relatable story during 1-1 interactions.
Pamphlets were redesigned with photographs and relatable stories. When used during 1-1 interactions, they helped to spark interest in the conversation and enhance users’ interest in training and financial products
Pamphlets were redesigned with photographs and relatable stories. When used during 1-1 interactions, they helped to spark interest in the conversation and enhance users’ interest in training and financial products
Pamphlets were used by the participants post training to share information they received during the training with their family and peers.
Pamphlets were used by the participants post training to share information they received during the training with their family and peers.
During pre training interactions, the Pamphlets served as an invitation to the training- with details on location, contact number of the trainer and other features to establish credibility.
During pre training interactions, the Pamphlets served as an invitation to the training- with details on location, contact
number of the trainer and other features to establish credibility.
The R&Ts took time to chat with users and understand their specific needs – then engaged them with help of the pamphlet and client stories
The R&Ts took time to chat with users and understand their specific needs – then engaged them with help of the pamphlet and client stories
Clients related with the images and stories and were inspired to learn more about financial services available for them.
Clients related with the images and stories and were inspired to learn more about financial services available for them.
