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Competition in Tanzania – Fact or Fable?

Posted on by MSC

Tanzania is often cited as a model competitive market in digital financial services (DFS) with the three major providers healthily competing against one another. However, the story is a bit more complicated than that, and to really understand market dynamics in Tanzania it helps to examine competition from a few angles, and on a more granular level.

In markets dominated by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), there is a basket of methods to measure competition on the provider level, however the most common  are voice market share and DFS (mobile money/agent banking) customer market share.  The first is important, because it indicates the ability of the provider (relative to its competitors) to transition people to their DFS platform (except in countries based on Over-the-Counter Transactions), and the second is important because DFS is an industry where scale is the only path to profitability, and at scale, a network effect can potentially create autocatalytic growth.  However, here, we present a third method for measurement, which is the proportion of agents serving each provider in the field.  This is an important contribution because it provides a metric for supply-side infrastructure that indicates how accessible the service is on the ground.

Figure 1: Three Metrics of Competitive Dynamics in Tanzania*

*Sources include: Communications Commission of Kenya, Uganda Communications Commission, Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority, Provider’s websites and press releases and GSMA MMU research. Please note that these figures are best estimates. Also please note only figures from dominate providers are noted here and therefore numbers might not add up to 100%.

**This figure is reported by GSMA MMU, which represents customers who use multiple services.  It is very likely that the majority of people in this category use Vodacom and one of the other services, meaning Vodacom’s market share might be underrepresented here.

Regarding voice market share, Tanzania is almost ideally competitive, and clearly more competitive than other East African markets, however, it is interesting that the relatively equal market shares in Tanzania do not translate to equivalent proportions of the market in the DFS space.  Instead, market leaders have clearly accentuated market shares in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda in the DFS space relative to the voice space.  This is an indication that differences in resource allocations and levels of operational excellence make a big difference in the ability of a provider to translate success in the voice market to the DFS market.

Competition at the Agent Level:

Looking more granularly at DFS market share at the agent level, Tanzania has fiercer competition than Kenya and Uganda, meaning the market is more evenly distributed.  However, with the Agent Network Accelerator research we filtered these results by location, and the analysis is intriguing, showing that competition in Dar es Salaam is especially intense, however, outside of Dar Vodacom Tanzania is just as dominant as MTN is in Uganda (see chart below).  Further, we note that while only about 8% of Tanzanians live Dar es Salaam, about 30% of DFS agents are located there.  Therefore, not only do providers have more equal footholds there, but agent density per capita is also highest, meaning the market is more saturated than in other regions of the country.

Figure 2: Agent Network Market Share Across The Three Leading DFS Providers in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya

*In Tanzania Dar es Salaam was surveyed (largest city). In Uganda and Kenya we used the capital cities

Catalysing Shared Agents:

The highly competitive nature of Dar es Salaam resonates, as all providers have focused aggressively on that market, and to lesser degrees in the rural/non-capital (largest) city urban areas. However, the question remains as to what impact it has had on the development of the market itself.  The most noticeable difference on the ground is the level of exclusivity of the agents, with 84% of agents in Dar being shared by providers, while the majority of agents outside of Dar remain exclusive, almost entirely to Vodacom.

This high level of shared agents was certainly facilitated by the initial competitive market shares of the providers in the voice markets, which meant that no one player had enough market power to force agents into exclusivity agreements.  However, the small geographical concentration of non-exclusive agents in Tanzania makes it clear that even if there is the potential for shared agents across the country, aggressive investment in growing an agent network by multiple providers is still a necessary condition for non-exclusivity to thrive.

Figure 3: Exclusivity of Agents By Location – Tanzania*

*Taken from Slide 19 of ‘Agent Network Accelerator Survey: Tanzania Country Report 2013’

The Profitable Result for Agents:

The ironic outcome for agents operating in the competitive, saturated market of Dar es Salaam, is higher profits per agent.  However, this needs to be unpacked a bit, because Tanzania has higher profits overall versus Kenya and Uganda partly due to very low operational expenses.  Again, when we delve into a locational analysis we see that Dar es Salaam is considerably more profitable for agents than other areas of the country. When we separate the locational variable of being in Dar es Salaam with the exclusivity attribute, it is clear that serving multiple providers is the factor that has a strong positive correlation with profit (as opposed to just being located in Dar). Therefore, we conclude it is likely the ability of agents to serve multiple providers, and therefore earn multiple revenue streams which drives higher profitability in Dar es Salaam.

Figure 4: Median Agent Profits Per Month – Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya

*In Tanzania Dar es Salaam was surveyed (largest city). In Uganda and Kenya we used the capital cities

Figure 5: Media Agent  Profits Per Month – Tanzania

Conclusion

Although Tanzania has a competitive voice market, it has only translated to heighten competition in the DFS market in Dar es Salaam. While the data provided here can only show correlations, and not causation, combining it with qualitative interviews with agents and providers, a story does emerge.  It seems that initial tight competition in the voice market enabled the development of a shared agent network in Dar es Salaam where the three market leaders all focused their efforts.  The ability of agents to serve multiple providers increased their profits, as they were then able to collect revenue from multiple providers with minimal additions to their costs.

However, this dynamic has yet to spread beyond Dar es Salaam, where Vodacom remains just as dominant as MTN in Uganda.  Currently, challenging providers have intensified their focus on other parts of the country, and given it continues, we expect the whole country to look more like Dar es Salaam with profitable shared agent networks in the near future.

To read either our reports in full, please download them using the links below:

Agent Network Accelerator Survey – Tanzania Country Report

Agent Network Accelerator Survey – Uganda Country Report

Agent Network Accelerator Survey – Kenya Country Report – COMING SOON!

Building and sustaining agent networks – Evidence from Indonesia

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Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous democracy with a population of 238 million people. An archipelago with more than 17,500 islands, the country is rich in cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity. However, access to formal financial products/services still remains elusive for most people. According to World Bank estimates only 20% of Indonesians (above 15 years) have an account with a formal financial institution. The country has relatively lower bank branch and ATM penetration with 10 branches and 36 ATM respectively for every 100,000 adults.

The Government of Indonesia and the regulators (both Bank Indonesia – the central bank, and Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) – the financial services authority that regulates and supervises financial services activities in banking, capital markets, and non-bank financial industries) recognize this fact. Both have been proactive in efforts to extend financial access to the poor and unbanked sections of the society. Bank Indonesia, the central bank of Indonesia, has recently issued electronic money regulations and OJK is expected to release the branchless banking regulations by the end of the year.

In the light of this, MicroSave conducted a nationwide study on “Building & Sustaining Agent Networks for Branchless Banking/Digital Financial Services”.The research was commissioned by e-MITRA (USAID’s Mobile Money Implementation Unit in Indonesia) and Visa to support the rollout of Digital Financial Services (DFS) in Indonesia. The main objective of the research was to identify support requirements and expectations that agents have for agent management (such as training, support services, marketing, communications, etc.)

In order to ensure diversity among the respondent profiles/businesses, we interviewed various institutions and individuals such as: organized retail (multi-brand) outlets, government entities, wholesalers/distributors, rural banks, cooperatives, SMEs, corporates, individual mom & pop stores, airtime sellers and community leaders.

The highlight results show that the challenges and concerns of Indonesia’s agents are similar to those across the globe, suggesting that the core issues facing agent network managers are similar across many, if not most, markets. We go into further detail on these when The Helix Institute of Digital Finance undertakes the Agent Network Accelerator research in Indonesia at the end of 2014.

Likes and dislikes:

Respondents liked the facility of banking within the neighborhood offered by digital financial services (DFS), which enables the customers to conduct financial transactions within their community. Also, they appreciate the fact that they can transact at a time convenient to them. We have observed that most of the branchless banking/mobile money transactions are conducted outside the banking hours i.e. before 10 AM and after 5 PM. This is because the customers find it convenient to transact outside their work/office hours.

On the other side, the risk of fraud and cash handling figured prominently in dislikes of DFS. This is understandable because – 1. The concept is new and relatively unknown to many Indonesians; and 2. Fraud is indeed a big risk as we have seen in other deployments across the world. Research conducted by The Helix’s Agent Network Accelerator (ANA) survey shows that the risk of fraud remains the biggest agent management issue. We have discussed this extensively in our blogs – “Challenges to Agency Business – Evidence from Tanzania and Uganda (Part- I)” and “Why Rob Agents? Because That’s Where the Money Is”. This highlights the need for effective risk management practices, and more importantly of educating agents and end users about the risk/fraud management. See MicroSave’s “Fraud in Mobile Financial Services” for a comprehensive classification of risks and effective mitigation mechanisms.

Motivation to become an agent: Commissions remain the key motivator to become an agent.

Increased customer footfalls and customer loyalty also act as important motivators. Respondents feel that they could get more customer walk-ins if they become DFS agents, which could in turn lead to higher cross-selling. They also feel that association with a reputed brand (of bank/MNO) could lead to higher customer loyalty.

Interestingly, ease of payments also figures prominently as the second most important motivator. Our research shows that 99% of the transactions still take place in cash. With huge volume and value, digital payment services provide good potential for deployments in Indonesia.

“My customers can purchase goods and use the system for payment rather than bring loads of cash”- Hamid, a retailer from Kutai Timur, East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Requirements for Support:

Agents are the first point of contact for the customers. So it is important to provide adequate support to the agent to deal with customers/customer queries. Respondents suggest that the deployment should provide: call center support for agents and customers; supervisory visits; branch office support; and on-site support for technical/operational issues. These services are essential to increase the adoption by agents and customers, especially during the initial stages of deployment.

Our experience of working with other deployments across the world reiterates the importance of having separate helplines for agents and customers. Deployments often provide remote support to frontline agents through call centers. Call centers can also be helpful in addressing queries or grievances that customers may have. They can also be effective means to market the products, introduce special offers and take feedback on services offered. Equity Bank in Kenya recently conducted a huge marketing campaign to launch its m-banking product. Their call center played an important role to measure the effectiveness of various media channels used and provide inputs for future marketing strategy. See MicroSaveBriefing Note #129 on Customer Support for E/M-Banking Users. Other successful deployments such as WING Cambodia, M-Pesa and Eko have a toll free number that customers can call to seek answers for their queries and register complaints if any.

Training Requirement:

Agent training is a powerful tool to drive agent performance. Many agents have no/little exposure to selling or offering financial services, and of course, training is an important tool for the management of risk and fraud.

Respondents in the research felt that agents need training on product, technology, cash management, customer education, and regulatory related aspects.

As digital financial services are a relatively new concept in Indonesia, deployments need to focus a lot on training and education initiatives– both for providers’ internal staff and the agents. In addition, specific emphasis needs to be placed on customer education (marketing) in order to educate both agents and customers about the benefits of the service. Regulatory aspects – specifically related to authentication, KYC, fraud detection and money laundering should also be incorporated into agent training. See MicroSave Briefing Note #135:  Training E/M-Banking Agents: What is Missing?and#138 Implementing Training for E/M-Banking Agents.

Our research suggests that mobile and internet usage among the respondents is particularly high with 61% of them using mobile for internet browsing. Evidence suggests that 48% of regular internet users in Indonesia use a mobile phone to go online – which, perhaps surprisingly, is the highest among its Southeast Asian neighbors. With 66% of the respondents using smartphone, increasing usage of smart-phones was also prominent during our research. A recent GSMA study shows that global smartphone penetration as a percentage of the population is expected to rise from 19% in 2012 to 32% in 2017. This makes a case for the deployments to develop smart-phone based applications which offer enhanced user experience for the customers and better growth prospects for the deployments. Some of the telco-led deployments already using smart-phone application based interfaces include GCash (the Philippines), Zuum (Brazil) and Dompetku (Indonesia).

The findings of the research provide critical insights to deployments in Indonesia to design, build and implement well- functioning agent networks for delivery of formal financial products/services to unbanked and under-banked Indonesians. Further deployments in Indonesia are uniquely placed with latent demand/huge target market on one side and an opportunity to learn from successes/failures of deployments in other geographies on the other side.

Several times bitten: Still not shy?

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The intention to provide at least two accounts to each household in the next one year is welcome. But the question in everybody’s mind is: how will the target be achieved, and what will be the status of these accounts at the end of this exercise? The target itself is ambitious: we want to open 200 million accounts in a year, which converts to more than 660,000 accounts each day (considering 52 Sundays and 10 national holidays, although banks usually have more holidays in a year). To put things in perspective, all public sector and private sector banks collectively opened just 108.5 million BSBD (basic saving bank deposit) accounts in three financial years up to March-end 2013. Granted that our banks will work more efficiently this time around, and perhaps the government’s focus and guidance on this matter will lead to the achievement of these figures. But what can we learn from the implementation of these schemes in the past?

One need not look too far into history … we are surrounded by the results of earlier, government mandated financial inclusion efforts. Nearly half of the adult population still does not have a bank account; census data gives a figure of nearly 58.7 percent of households availing banking services, while World Bank estimate is lower i.e., only 35.2 percent adults (15 years and above) have an account with a formal financial institution. This is the situation eight years after RBI sanctioned the use of agents (business correspondents – BCs) to allow banks to reach remote and rural locations to serve what is known as the ‘underserved’ or the financially excluded population.

So, while one of the challenges is to ensure the opening of 200 million accounts amongst underserved households, a far greater challenge is presented by the question, “Where will the 200 million new customers transact?” To service, almost 70 percent additional customers, the existing banking infrastructure, especially the number of bank outlets will have to expand significantly. As bank branches are expensive to set up and to operate, the BC channel or extension points which ride on banking agents had been proposed. To use this channel effectively banks will have to appoint, train, manage and remunerate BC agents. But preliminary results of MicroSave’s recently concluded research (report forthcoming) indicates that hardly 35-40 percent GramPanchayats currently have an active agent. And when villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were sampled, we found that only 7% had transaction ready agents or customer service points – see the box.

The Curious Case of Missing Agents in Rural India

In a survey of 2,932 villages with a population of greater than 1,000, only 39% are covered through customer service points (CSPs) according to State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC). Fieldwork reveals that only 7% of the villages have transaction ready CSPs; only 4% have CSPs available to transact every day. A little over 2% of the appointed CSPs are doing more than 10 transactions a day, and less than 4% are earning more than Rs. 2,000 a month; with a median monthly income as low at Rs.1,500 – and so quite likely that such agents will quit the business soon.

It may be true that 221,341 agents were appointed by the end of March 2013, but it is also true that many of them have quit and remain only on paper, and many others never even started operations. (They were never provided with POS device, or the device was never repaired/replaced once it broke down, or customers did not come for repeat transactions due to the high rate of failure, connectivity issues and so on). Therefore, questions about infrastructure and presence of an adequate number of well trained and well-equipped cash-in/cash-out points will have to be addressed in addition to the push for opening additional accounts. The government needs to focus on the number of active accounts held, rather than just the absolute number of accounts opened. Otherwise, we are staring into a situation of a high number of dormant customer accounts because they don’t have a place to transact, a situation that we have been through in the past.

The July 2014report from InterMedia, “India: Financial Services Use and Emerging Digital Pathways”, shows that only 54 percent of accounts are active (activity defined here as one transaction in 90 days), and within this, the usage is lower in rural locations. Therefore to assume that providing an account will lead to actual usage and to financial inclusion is incorrect. Customers need the right products, which are designed to suit their specific financial needs. They will not use saving and loan products designed for upper and middle-income customers and do not want a “no frills” account that is stripped of useful features like ATM cards.

If we believe that direct benefit transfer (DBT) payments will take care of account activity, we are forgetting that the distribution channel’s viability is still an issue that needs to be addressed. Banks have still not been able to see profitability in the BC channel; and so, in turn, they do not provide adequate support or timely commission payments to the BC network managers. And thus the agents are not adequately managed or remunerated. The DBT programme has the potential to be an anchor product to underpin and make the BC model viable. But in most states banks are not adequately remunerated for delivering DBT payments, so the opportunity is missed.

As a result of an endless procession of directives, pilots, and forced-march rollouts, the country is littered with the debris of “financial inclusion efforts”. These failed efforts and a multitude of closed agent outlets erode the trust of the poor in the reliability of formal financial services.

All those who care about bring financial services to the poor could best support the financial inclusion agenda by taking a step back. We need to spend the time to learn from the earlier mistakes, align incentives so that all partners are willing and able to move forward and then prepare for a flawless implementation. Rushing out another set of admirable targets and mandating unwilling partners to achieve them will not further the cause. The current government has commendably resisted populist measures until now – be it the financial bill, or the railway budget or any other matter having a direct impact on the common man. It should also resist populist pronouncements on financial inclusion as well. A delay of a few months will be less harmful than a repeat of earlier mistakes.

Aadhaar based e-KYC service – The much needed change catalyst for financial inclusion!

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It is a well-documented fact that a   low level of financial inclusion in rural India is primarily due to low penetration of formal financial institutions, especially the banks. Another equally important reason for this is lack of acceptable proof of identity and address documents. Though a number of initiatives had been endeavored by the Central / State Governments and the banking regulators to counter the aforesaid challenge, the problem remained largely unresolved.

In this context launch of Aadhaar based e-KYC service (electronic repository of demographic details and photograph verifiable through biometric authentication) could prove to be cure-all in order to reduce the risk of identity fraud, document forgery, and instill paperless KYC verification.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had communicated to all banks (excluding RRBs), payment system providers and prospective prepaid payment instrument issuer to treat the information made available from UIDAI as an ‘Officially Valid Document’ under the Prevention of Money Laundering guidelines to open a bank account.

Further on, recently released report of the Nachiket Mor Committee on “Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households” made some concrete recommendations to enhance the spread and use of formal financial institutions.

The most revolutionary, and therefore the most talked about, the recommendation is the provision of a “Universal Electronic Bank Account” (UEBA), for each adult Indian using Aadhaar as e-KYC.

In a recently released blog we had mentioned, it would be a leap of faith by a bank/few banks to take this lead of e-KYC. Good news is that at least one bank has already done this and it is one of the largest private sector banks, Axis Bank.

The case of Mrs. Boudevi is not an ordinary one. Rather in times to come by it may prove to be a historic one. She is the first person whose account opened through e-KYC facility of Aadhaar. In coming few years it may be a thing of yore that it used to take a minimum of 15 days for lucky ones to open accounts. And for the unlucky ones, those who did not have proper documents they could very well remain without accounts.  And that’s how it has been till now.

This is precisely what Aadhaar as e-KYC is set to change. And now as it is done we can say it is good start and leap of faith. It goes against the basic fulcrum of Indian banks as they are not to put faith in records of some other entity. That UIDAI has a high level of data integrity and security definitely helped in this development.

Now that it is out of the way what comes next? What exactly banks can expect in return? Why are they more likely to lap up this opportunity? We may deconstruct this going further.

Why banks should adopt this? Because private Banks are at a disadvantageous position in comparison to public sector banks in terms of their outreach owing to two prime reasons. One is late entry and second is limited/restricted access to unlimited capital to deepen their outreach. But private banks can turn this disadvantage into an advantage with the use of technology and e-KYC is just one of them.

On the question of what comes next, definitely, banks look at it in the context of returns. With the use of Aadhaar as e-KYC banks can deepen their outreach in the unbanked segment of the population. In the short run, it will help them in meeting their social banking targets but banks will be missing the opportunity if they stop at that. They should start looking at this segment as potential customers. As is fairly well documented in our studies and otherwise also poor do save and they save for various purposes, hence they need access to financial products. It can even be argued that access to financial services should be fundamental right. Hitherto unbanked population could not have access in want to not having KYC documents to meet the requirements of banks. Aadhaar as a backbone of this platform gives banks the opportunity to offer financial products that suit the requirements of poor and unbanked population segment.

But all this may come to naught if there are not enough banking outlets to access these services. As a recent study by MicroSave highlighted in the sample of five districts only 4% of 1000+ population villages have access to bank CSPs.

It can be safely said that Aadhaar based e-KYC service can turn out to be much-needed change catalyst for financial inclusion in rural India. A good start has been made but there are many more chapters untold and it will be interesting to see how this story unfolds?

Financial inclusion and new product development — What should guide us?

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The answer is, of course, customer needs. Customers’ knowledge and perceptions about the financial services on offer—plus any challenges in accessing these services—are the other two major guiding factors. With all this in mind, any service provider can develop and then modify successful products.

Easy to outline in a very short paragraph, easy to comprehend, but the real problem lies in the implementation.

In India, the financial inclusion stakeholders (the central bank and its retail banking network, microfinance institutions, international donors, among others) realized that the unbanked and under-banked–41 percent of the overall population, 60 percent in rural areas—were facing the service-access challenge noted above. Many couldn’t open their first accounts because they lacked both the necessary cash for initial deposits and the documentation to fulfill standard KYC (Know Your Customer) authentication and credit-check procedures.

So banks came up with Zero Balance Accounts, a “product enhancement” that allowed these stymied prospective clients to open an account with no deposit and relaxed KYC (i.e. minimal identifying paperwork and background checks for creditworthiness).

In theory, and on paper, and in conference rooms a far remove from the undocumented and the unbanked, these solutions should have worked…but they didn’t. Why? (For a comprehensive understanding of the history and many complexities inherent in this problem, please see MicroSave’s research papers on Dormancy in No Frills Accounts. Also, Barriers in Access to Banking which highlights a wider spectrum of issues beyond simply minimum balances and authentication.)

Life Insurance Company of India (LIC), India’s largest state-owned insurance and investment operation with an estimated asset value of US$3 billion, and prestigious industry awards (see here and here for more) would seem to be an unlikely candidate to be doing a much better job at serving up the right solutions. But they do. Let’s look at some of the reasons.

LIC’s core product from the outset almost 60 years ago has been life insurance, with a focus on an endowment, risk cover, and long-term savings. During this time, they have been consistently creating new, targeted combinations for every new customer segment—while improving and extending their agents and office delivery channels, which now include an LIC app and more flexible premium payments.

Somehow LIC has also managed to avoid the deadly detour into back-end processes and regulations dictating the customer interface, even fairly simple interfaces like money transfers. Instead, the basic LIC customer need for long-term financial protection seems to actually inform everything from sign-up to pay-out. Digital financial services could usefully heed this distinction.

As everyone knows, but no one readily admits, mobile banking and all its various electronic offshoots depend almost entirely on remittances to be “sustainable”—i.e. make money and survive. Without internal remittances from urban migrant workers to rural communities, (estimates vary from $1-5 billion and of course, are not current), the essential cash-IN would not exist to enable savings, investments, payments, and other cash-outs that help create and maintain full financial inclusion.

So, if we briefly revisit the first paragraph, the urgent customer need—in this case, quick, easy, cheap money transfer from sender to the beneficiary—should be simple to understand and even simpler to execute. Opening an account just gets in the way. Banks instituted the need for this tiresome and usually unwelcome process to comply with money-laundering concerns, not because an account is needed to transfer a small amount of rupees from bank agent to bank agent. And, as many remitters are discovering, it is possible to do the easy way without an account—please see Transition from OTC to Wallets–Findings from Bangladesh, and Values Offered by OTC.

User adoption is based on trust. Bank accounts are no exception. If anything, since money is involved, more trust and thus more time are necessary. Let people try something first, with no commitment or complications, for as long as it takes, before insisting they buy into your value proposition and open an account.

Late last year, MicroSave researchers were in the field talking to customers, bankers, and agents about various authentication techniques. (In India, identification and verification for a transaction can include thumb impressions, signatures, PINs, and/or all ten biometric fingerprints.) Most customers like the thumb and biometric impressions best since they don’t have to remember anything. But many had learned how to manage PINs—after initial mistakes and frustrations—and proud of their mastery, they weren’t interested in changing.

Biometrics posed problems as well at the outset. Customers pressed their rough fingers on a surface that could only read smooth, clean fingertips and incurred delays, false negatives, and other difficulties. Again, they figured out quickly that moistening their fingers expedited the process—and their G2P benefit payments. Even the elderly, not usually the fastest segment to adopt and adapt to a new technology, saw the benefit to perfecting their biometric technique and did so with minimal fuss.

From this, we can conclude:

  • In order to collect money (or any asset of value) in their name–and to ensure it does not end up in someone else’s hands—people will accept relatively complicated authentication processes and learn them quickly and without complaint;

And by extension:

  • In order to collect money from a relative or the government—funds recipients feel are rightfully theirs—people see no reason to open an account from which they intend to withdraw all or most of the full sum immediately. They see even less reason to then pay fees on an empty account.

Perhaps the more correct answer to Financial Inclusion and New Product Development–What Should Guide Us? are customer needs, to be sure, but explored over time and without biases. It’s surprising how much people will tell us if we just listen better, observe more, and pause to think how most of us would respond in their situation.

Remittance Market in the Philippines

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The Philippines, an archipelago of 7107 islands, is an important remittance market in Asia. Over 9.5 Million Overseas Filipino Workers send over US$ 24.3 billion (10.7% of the GDP) every year which makes Philippines the third largest recipient of remittance in Asia after India and China. In this vedio, Shivshankar V., our Resident Expert in the Philippines, talks about the remittance market and about the project in which MicroSave is supporting a consortium of financial institutions in the Philippines to set up a remittance company catering to unbanked migrant population in rural areas.