Akhand Tiwari

Partner

Akhand Jyoti Tiwari is a Partner at MSC and leads BFSI work. Akhand brings multiple years of experience in development consulting.

He works closely with policymakers, practitioners, academics, and investment & donor agencies. Akhand's recent work includes strengthening policies and practice on financial inclusion, and unpacking barriers to gender equality to promote women's economic empowerment. Akhand also actively guides MSC's work on unpacking behaviour of low and middle income segments; and using design thinking to solve strategic and tactical challenges of MSC's clients.

Posts by Akhand Tiwari

Choice of Channel: Understanding how LMI women select a channel to conduct financial transactions

Individuals choose a channel for financial transactions based on several factors beyond just the economic cost involved. The DEBIT framework is a tool that identifies these factors and helps compute comparative scores for each channel. Comparing DEBIT scores helps us understand which channel someone chooses and why.

Women’s agent network—the missing link in India’s financial inclusion story: A supply-side perspective

About 10% of 1.26 million BCs in India are women. This policy note discusses a supply-side perspective on challenges and opportunities to expand the women agent network in India.

What will it take for eSanjeevaniOPD to help tackle the third COVID-19 wave and future pandemics?

This briefing note shares our insights and recommendations from our pilot to strengthen eSanjeevaniOPD—the Government of India’s teleconsultation platform and similar private platforms.

“Train me like this”: Lessons from a pilot with CDOT and JRGB on CICO agent training

As per the RBI guidelines, BC agents need to clear the IIBF BC/BF examination to continue offering BC services. However, CDOT, a BCNM, faced issues while helping its agents clear the IIBF BC examination. This deck details the concept we tested to increase the pass percentage of CDOT agents.

“Train me like this”: Lessons from the pilot on IIBF BC/BF certification

Between 2012 and 2021, out of approximately 300,000 agents, who appeared for the IIBF BC/BF exam, only 62% passed the exam. This blog details out the challenges faced by BC agents in passing the IIBF BC/BF exam. It also offers suggestions to policymakers on graded certifications based on the type of services offered by BCs.

Facilitating cottage, micro, small, and medium enterprises during the pandemic

The op-ed stresses the challenges 7.7 million CMSMEs face in Bangladesh that are in distress due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It analyzes gaps in the government’s current relief package and suggests strategies to improve grassroots entrepreneurship in Bangladesh.

GOOTCHA—A framework to build gender-sensitive ID systems

The World Bank estimates that around a billion people across the globe lack a “legal identity.” The gender gap in terms of people’s access to official IDs is considerable in low-income countries, where one in two women lack any form of official ID. This limits financial, social, and political participation for women.

Working paper: A framework for building gender-sensitive identity systems

One in two women in low-income countries lack official identification documents, which limits their financial, social, and political participation. This report explores the design and lifecycle of ID systems from gender and behavioral lenses and proposes a framework to make them more gender-sensitive.