Signature projects

Strengthening CICO agent networks to drive financial inclusion in India

  • calendarSep 4, 2025
  • time 2 min

The Pathways to Enhancing Financial Inclusion in India (PEFI) initiative tested and scaled solutions to strengthen cash-in-cash-out (CICO) agent networks in India. While CICO agents are critical to the extension of reliable financial services to underserved communities, yet many face lifecycle challenges that hinder their performance and threaten their sustainability. This initiative intended to empower agents, enhance resilience, reduce attrition, and improve agility in day-to-day operations to ultimately ensure better financial access for low-income and rural customers.

MSC led the design and implementation of behaviorally informed pilots that addressed critical lifecycle inflection points for agents. The team provided coaching and mentoring support through the Indian Institute of Banking and Finance (IIBF) module, strengthened agent communication with rural women customers to encourage savings, evaluated new pricing models to lower merchant costs and increase transaction yields, enhanced product and service offerings to boost agent revenues, and improved agent channel performance for leading banks. MSC also developed credit underwriting models and assessment tools to help financial institutions evaluate the creditworthiness of their agents to further support network stability and growth.

These interventions delivered measurable improvements in onboarding, retention, and trust within agent networks. The pilots served as proof of concept for behaviorally informed strategies to produce positive results that supported their scale-up under the Scaling Agent Viability and Sustainability project. By enabling agents to operate more effectively and sustainably, the initiative has contributed to the expansion of reliable, inclusive financial services in underserved areas.

The Gates Foundation commissioned this project, in collaboration with partners such as the State Bank of India (SBI), NITI Aayog, India Post Payments Bank (IPPB), Fino Payments Bank, Jharkhand Rajya Gramin Bank (JRGB), Eko India Financial Services, Spice Money, Arth Digital, and the Centre for Development Orientation and Training (CDOT).

 

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