Livelihood and income generation for post banking agents in Bangladesh

• Dec 28, 2023
• 2 min

MSC worked with Bangladesh Post and Bank Asia to solve two critical problems: (i) Livelihood and income generation for post e-centers; (ii) Improve LMI customers’ resilience and financial health. We diagnosed the core issues the post banking agents faced, restructured their incentive plan, and mapped out the critical success factors that separate the high-performing post banking agents from the low-performing ones.

MSC supported Bangladesh Post Office and Bank Asia to ensure resilience and a sustainable livelihood for post banking agents. This project intended to use Bangladesh Post’s digital post e-centers’ initiative to improve the low-and-moderate-income segment’s (LMI) financial health.

MSC helped Bank Asia develop channels, build capacity, marketing and communications, and supervision and evaluation. The overarching goal was to solve two fundamental and interconnected problems:

1. Post banking agents’ livelihood and income generation: 8,500 post e-center agents across Bangladesh earn less than USD 115 per month from the existing postal services. They need to be sustainable to serve thousands of rural LMI customers effectively.
2. Financial services to build the LMI segment’s financial resilience and health: Millions of Bangladeshis live in rural areas and do not have access to the right financial solutions for their needs. Banks struggle to serve them due to high costs. They need access to appropriate financial services from a nationwide agent network, which is particularly convenient for female customers.

MSC conducted the post banking operations’ diagnostic and found infrastructural challenges and room for improvement in the post banking agents’ capabilities. MSC helped the bank agents develop the infrastructure and improve agent capacity through training and refreshers. MSC also supported Bank Asia to promote the channel through marketing communication and an agent comic book. Our current work also includes the revision of the incentive structure for the post banking agents’ channel development.

As a result of MSC’s interventions, Bank Asia onboarded 192,000 new customers, with 58% women. It also provided remittance for 1,750 agents and credit services beyond basic banking services. 22% of customers also received credit from these post e-center agents.

MetLife Foundation commissioned this project.