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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 is literate and has studied until the 7th grade. As her husband works outside their village, she takes most minor household decisions for herself and her two children. She has the opportunity for independent decision making and autonomy but chooses not to get involved with larger, more intimidating financial decisions. As she is trying to balance the household context and her needs, she is nervous to tip the balance, but she worries about a secure future for her family.

She attended a Swadhaar training with her sister and enjoyed the session on life cycle needs matched to financial products which demystified the idea of complex financial products and gave her simple next steps to take. Nikhat was particularly fascinated to hear about digital payment channels that would enable her to receive money from her husband easily and make regular deposits. With support from her sister and 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.

“I manage the household independently. My husband works and I take up seasonal work whenever I can. I have my own savings. I saved them from my earnings and from the household expenditure budget.”

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 traveling 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 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.

FINACT PROCESS AND METHODOLOGY

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.

FINACT PROCESS AND METHODOLOGY

Through collaborations with leading industry experts, FINACT is building a deeper understanding of what motivates and drives behaviour change. Building on Swadhaar’s on-ground experience FINACT closely links research with action to provide valuable insights into how the effectiveness of financial literacy interventions can be increased.

The FINACT Project team works closely with Behaviour Science Experts, Final Mile, to map out various experiments to understand our clients’ behaviours and decision-making. 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.

Our learnings from these Experiments bring 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.

Immersion

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.

Design of Experiment Briefs

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.

Experiments deployed across our Live Labs

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.

Design Briefs

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.

The process methodology involves the following four steps
Immersion

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.

Design of Experiment Briefs

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.

Experiments deployed across our Live Labs

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.

Design Briefs

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.

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.

Community
Support

Experiment Goals 

To create a system level trigger/support for people post training. Over time to build a cohort of Community influencers through whom Swadhaar can stay connected with communities and deliver focused support when needed. 

Gaps & Opportunity Areas Addressed 

One of the opportunity areas FINACT is focused on is sustained longer term engagement and support for training participants. The in-person session is a key engagement point in the training process and also where interest in information and product uptake peaks for most participants. However, there are many for whom the nudge from intent-to-action takes longer due to a range of social and system level challenges. There is an opportunity there to introduce a contextual trigger post training that can help them stay engaged and move ahead in the desired direction, as well as provide community support to encourage users in adverse situations. 

 Outcome

  • Higher mobilization of participants for trainings 
  • Increase in post training inquiries to Trainers and telecallers 
  • Improved rate of product linkages post training
  • Improved outcomes for participants in achieving their financial journey milestones 
  • Better communication for Trainers with community members – ears on ground to help customize training programs as per the local needs 
  • Building a network of connections with other organizations and programs to address holistic community needs

Experiment Activities

For this experiment, the key idea was to build a cohort of community influencers who understand the local context intuitively and can become a touch point between Swadhaar and community members. 

Over a 6 month period, we worked with both volunteers (called Community Champions or CCs in the experiment) and paid contributors (called Community Trainers or CTs). Of the 50 influencers recruited, 25 were paid a monthly stipend and 25 joined on a volunteer basis. Over the project period this allowed us to test across both groups for role definition, recruitment strategies, performance on ground, overall motivations and ownership. 

Steps

  • Conceptualization of the selection criteria, role and responsibility, training, management for the CC/CT cohort 
  • Training R&Ts on the CC/CT selection criteria, role definition, expectation setting and field management
  • Recruitment and training of CC/CT candidates in the village by R&T. Tracking sheets used to maintain a database of shortlisted candidates and reasons for selection. 
  • R&T to introduce the CC/CT to Panchayat members, bank officials, and local village leaders 
  • Weekly R&T visit to the CC/CT and detailed tracking sheet to be filled for clients helped
  • Revision of the role for the CC/CT based on feedback

Learnings

  • There was no marked difference in the performance by both roles. The Volunteer cohort of CCs were just as motivated, through non-monetary incentives of praise, recognition, and respect
  • We found higher ownership among the Volunteer cohort of CCs due to their motivations in joining the program – to help other community members
  • There was greater engagement with our women influencers. They served as role models for other women in the community, and had access to various segments of the community, including households, schools and local groups. This access could be leveraged to disseminate information and promote behaviour change, reaching individuals who might otherwise be challenging to engage

We saw higher levels of engagement during the first three months of the experiment, but a dip post the four or five month mark. To address this, we looked at redesigning the responsibilities for a longer term period, transitioning from a more active role with a “push” approach to more passive engagement focused on content dissemination and answering queries. We also tested ways to keep the CC/CT more connected with Swadhaar using Whatsapp and Telecallers.

Financial Journey
Discovery

Experiment Goals 

  • To map the overall financial journey of our key segment of clients to better understand barriers, enablers, and triggers in their financial journeys
  • To understand the context, goals, relationships, beliefs, (formal and informal) financial interactions of the target population of rural women 
  • To develop and test customized interventions based on this nuanced understanding of financial agency.

Gaps & Opportunity Areas Addressed 

Measuring the journey to financial agency for different women involves understanding the diverse challenges and opportunities they face. Financial literacy training interventions can play a transformative role by acknowledging and addressing the unique challenges faced by these women. Firstly, recognising the cultural and societal factors influencing financial decision making is crucial. Tailoring training interventions to resonate with local contexts can bridge the gap between traditional mindsets and modern financial concepts. Secondly, understanding the specific economic roles that women play in rural settings, such as managing household budgets or engaging in small-scale entrepreneurship, allows for targeted education on relevant financial skills. Through this study, we aim to also map interpersonal relationships in decision making within families and communities. By incorporating these nuanced insights, training interventions can provide the right nudges, be it through accessible language, community involvement, or customized tools, empowering rural women to navigate barriers, make informed decisions and ultimately enhance their financial agency. 

Through the mapping of customer personas based on financial agency, we aim to refine our interventions and provide women with the tools and resources needed to make decisions about their own lives, including economic choice, education, healthcare and family planning. 

Outcomes

  • Customer personas based on financial agency to help segregate users in this segment with a detailed, more granular understanding of their lives, decision-making and nudges to take the next step on their financial journeys
  • Actionable insights to customize and strengthen training interventions to suit varying user personas 

Experiment Activities

This experiment was conducted over a 6-month period with a series of detailed qualitative interviews for a sample of 100 users. Users were selected as survey respondents based on several parameters like geography, demographic diversity, and tangible financial behavior outcomes. As an initial hypothesis, survey respondents were segmented across 3 key areas related to account ownership, product ownership and usage. 

The first round of the survey focused on building a detailed understanding of the user’s context, family, and financial situation. Interactive tools were developed to use during the survey to engage with the users and their families and encourage open and instinctively honest answers. 

Based on a detailed analysis of Round 1 findings, the second round of the survey dove deeper into the financial behaviors of the 100 respondents. Over 60-90 minute long conversations, the surveyors explored how users thought about money and interacted with their families over financial decisions.

Steps

  • Conceptualization of study objectives, research areas and recruitment criteria for survey respondents
  • Design and development of survey tools 
  • Training R&Ts on the user selection criteria, survey tools, and qualitative survey skills
  • Recruitment of survey respondents across villages by the R&Ts 
  • Implementation of surveys across all Live learning Labs. Detailed audio and video recordings obtained with user consent to ensure that all nuances of the interaction are captured and taken into account during analysis
  • Analysis of the first round survey data to collate insights and build a first level hypothesis
  • Design and development of the second round survey questionnaire and tools 
  • Implementation of second round surveys conducted by trained moderators for the first 30 users to train R&Ts and gain first hand field insights
  • Detailed analysis and synthesis of survey data to arrive at final mapping of user personas based on financial agency 

Learnings

  • While training interventions take a largely homogenized approach within the focus user segment, we found through the survey that women were not all in the same place on the continuum of financial resilience. It is not just their engagement with formal finance that determines their position, but also their level of financial agency. Furthermore, agency is dependent on the interplay between her context and internal self-efficacy
  • We mapped 4 agency led personas: The Passive Observer, The Frustrated Fighter, The Indifferent Manager and The Optimistic Influencer. In order to operationalize this differentiated approach, we detailed out how interventions can locate the user based on her context, agency and financial engagement and then act by providing relevant information, support and access to move her ahead on her journey, and create that enabling environment to reach out for more information to keep moving forward.

Technology Enabled
Interactions

Coming soon

Quantification of
Agency led Persona

Coming soon

Modular
Content Design

Coming soon

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