The financial services ecosystem has seen revolutionary changes through digital channels, but usage remains concentrated amongst urban users. Financial inclusion has largely been associated with driving access. However, this does not necessarily result in sustainable behavioural change, as access or awareness alone do not result in adoption.

The ‘Banking on Her’ Research Series builds a behaviour led understanding of underserved families, and particularly women. Using behavioural sciences informed qualitative and quantitative studies, we delve deep to understand her context, agency, enablers and barriers to financial resilience. Our approach is to distil actionable, replicable and scalable insights that are grounded in field realities and the lived experiences of our users. Built through Swadhaar’s interactions across millions of participants, these insights are tailored to the unique context of each user. We use persona mapping to locate customers in their journeys from financial vulnerability to resilience; define critical variables through quantification to develop heuristics and identify personas and highlight learnings and insights to develop user-centric solutions.