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Consumer insights

Digital credit in Kenya: evidence from demand-side surveys

In the past five years, digital loans have transformed the market for credit in Kenya. For millions of adults, the possibility of borrowing from their phones has opened the door to private, formal consumer credit for the first time.

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Protecting consumers means thinking like consumers
Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Protecting consumers means thinking like consumers

Joseph and Alice are not real people, but the impact of behavioral research on consumer protection is anything but hypothetical. Across the world, consumer protection authorities have been using behavioral research to inform everything from post-financial crisis rules for mortgage brokers to regulations on new mobile and app-based financial services.

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Blog
Consumer insights

Data sharing models: The potential for financial innovation and the risks that must be managed

There is a range of new data sharing models emerging that could have a significant impact on financial innovation in emerging markets.

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Article
Consumer insights

Field Notes

FSD Kenya carries out research excursions across the country to obtain perspectives of ordinary Kenyans regarding finance, financial services and how the financial system has impacted their livelihoods.

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Blogs and publications
Consumer insights

Emerging data sharing models to promote financial service innovation: global trends and their implications for emerging markets

In countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, India, and Mexico, there is momentum to increase consumers’ ability to access, manage, and control their digital identity and history.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Fin::voices

This interactive data visualization tool enables users to explore how over 290 participants from the Kenya Financial Diaries study viewed their lives, money and financial services.

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Blog
Consumer insights

Design that can be understood by almost everyone: the case of IKEA and seed insurance

“…fintech innovations need to be more inclusive, easier to use, and designers should work harder to provide greater consumer protection and empowerment.”

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

The digital credit revolution in Kenya: an assessment of market demand, 5 years on

Five years after Kenya launched the world’s first digital credit solution, the market for digital credit has expanded rapidly in Kenya and many low-income countries. But exactly how big is the market? Who’s using digital credit? And what impact is it having on low-income customers?

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Blog
Consumer insights

Why disruptive innovation in the financial sector can benefit poor people

Meaningful financial solutions can help poor people manage day to day, deal with risk and invest in the future.

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Blog
Consumer insights

Creating value through financial inclusion: the trust element

In an effort to understand the real needs of the people, our seventh ‘Field Friday’ exercise took us to Karagita in Naivasha. We set out to gather insights on which financial services people use and which ones they trust most.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Market research tools

Find out what percentage of adults are using a range of formal and informal financial services and products in Kenya, overall and for sub-groups of the population defined by age, gender, wealth, geographic location and education.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

FinAccess 2016 financial service importance tool

Which financial services are perceived to be the most important to Kenyans, and why? This interactive heat map draws from the 2016 FinAccess household survey and displays the percentage of people using a range of financial services

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

FinAccess 2016 interactive segmentation tool

Who are the users of different financial products & services?

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Blog
Consumer insights

The use of borrowed airtime with interest in Kenya

The telecom sector in Kenya has experienced phenomenal growth over the past decade. Mobile phone penetration has topped 90%, with 78% of Kenyan adults now owning a working mobile phone.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Losing a big bet: Annette

At 29, Annette is already a widow.  When we met her, she lived in a rented house now near a shopping centre along the main road in Vihiga.  Her in-laws were never very fond of her, and after her husband’s death they chased her off the land where the two were living.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Finance & fortune

How exactly do financial services impact low income Kenyans? In this note, we extract the stories of eight respondent households from the Financial Diaries.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Renting and brewing on the road to growth: Stella & Duncan

Duncan was born in the rural community in Vihiga where he still lives today.  His father died when he was six years old.  His mother struggled to take care of her children alone.  Because of that financial pressure, Duncan did not go to high school and instead began working from a young age.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

At last, independence: Lucy

For Lucy, the trouble started early.  As exams approached at the end of primary school, her parents were fighting.  Her father was drinking a lot and had a number of mistresses.  They quarreled openly; nothing was normal at home.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Hustle pays off: Matthew

Matthew has been a hustler for as long as he can remember.  He did well in primary school and wanted to go on to a good secondary school.  But, his mother at home was paralyzed and couldn’t work.  His father, he says, “Is just a farmer, you know.  He doesn’t take this issue of school seriously.” 

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

New income & new burdens: Henry & Naomi

Henry, one of eight children, was only able to go to school until form two, the second year of secondary school, when his parents had to pull him out because they could no longer afford the fees. 

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Mounting responsibilities in old age: Janet & Joseph

Janet and Joseph have been together for 50 years.  Janet had been in school up to class seven, when she dropped out, pregnant with their first child.  She was eighteen years old.  They stayed together at Joseph’s rural home for a few years until he decided to move to Kericho and look for work. 

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Struggling for School Fees: Magdalene

Compared to most households in her community in Makueni, Magdalene has been doing pretty well.  She earned most of her income in the Diaries from selling clothes on market days around the county. 

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

From the ghetto to the good Life: Ernest & Greta

Ernest grew up in a rural area in Kenya’s Central region and help from family enabled him to move to Nairobi for accounting studies in 1998 after finishing high school.  He completed Certified Public Accounting training up to section four, but found it hard to get a job.  In 2003, he found himself desperate. 

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Blog
Consumer insights

Six secrets of the self-employed

This is the second post in a three-post blog series introducing publications from our recently concluded Kenya Financial Diaries update study, conducted with BFA.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Small “b” biashara

Self-employment is a major source of income for low income Kenyans, and Financial Diaries respondents are no exception. When we talked to respondents in 2015, two years after the close of the original Diaries, those whose economic lives were improving pointed to business returns as one of the main drivers of their success.

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Blog
Consumer insights

Informal vs formal: The need for financial services to complement, not compete

Our third “Field Friday” exercise reveals lessons for formal financial service providers to learn from informal services.

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Blog
Consumer insights

Where are they now?

Over the next three weeks, we will be releasing three publications based on findings from the Kenya Financial Diaries Update, a follow up study with the Kenya Financial Diaries households.

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Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Trickling down & climbing up

In late 2015, we followed up with Financial Diaries households to check in on their economic lives two years after the initial Diaries study ended. We wanted to know how they are doing now, the factors driving changes in their economic lives, and the role that financial services and financial choices were playing in their economic trajectories.

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Blog
Consumer insights

Transparency in finance: Is it a matter of life and death?

Financial institutions play a key role in enhancing trust in the financial system

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Social networks of mobile money in Western Kenya
Consumer insights
Consumer insights

Social networks of mobile money in Western Kenya

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