Enabling digital financial inclusion for rural women: emerging findings from India
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Nidhi is one of over 1500 Banking Correspondent Agents (BCAs) under the World Bank’s (IDA $500M) National Rural Livelihood Project (NRLP) in India that supports the Government’s National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) in 13 high poverty states.
Agent-based branchless banking in India is not new and has been around for over a decade. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) in 2014 to boost financial inclusion. To date, over 310 million PMJDY bank accounts (basic savings bank accounts) have been opened with 53 percent of these accounts now being held by women.
This agenda got a further boost when the Government of India launched the
It is estimated that about 126,000 BC agents currently operate in Indian villages of whom only about 10-12 percent are women. Encouraging rural populations especially women, to participate formally in the financial system continues to be a challenge not just in India, but globally, as most village level transactions still happen in cash. India has some special challenges. Social barriers such as caste, low literacy levels, and low mobility of women do not encourage poor rural women to engage with the formal financial system. Given these constraints, it has indeed been a daunting task to engage women as BC agents on the supply side and simultaneously encourage the use of bank accounts by rural women on the demand side.
A pilot initiative supported under NRLP is now exploring different pathways of improving formal financial access for rural women-headed households in partnership with various financial institutions (both public and private) including non-bank financial institutions like m-pesa & Oxigen. Tapping the 45 million strong network of women Self-Help Group (SHG) members under NRLM, various states are identifying and training eligible members as BC agents in association with partner banks. Apart from investments in hardware and in training, BC agents are also trained to service transactions of SHGs and their members.
Since June 2017 under this initiative over 1500 SHG members have started their entrepreneurial journeys as BC agents of partner banks across six low-income states including Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. In Feb 2018 alone these BC agents, locally known as “bank sakhis” (bank friends) collectively did over 260,000 transactions worth over INR 640 million (approx.USD 10M).
The growth in female rural BC agents is encouraging earlier un(der)banked women to use their bank accounts meaningfully which progressively, is also helping them create their own credit history and access other financial services. As
Such initiatives are not only improving usage of bank accounts by women but are helping in improving loan repayment rates due to improved access to banks. For now, bankers are also happy as this is migrating low value transactions to a low-cost ICT-enabled channel and reducing attrition amongst BC agents. Emerging lessons from this pilot have important implications for rural financial inclusion globally. Training and empowering women as BC agents may be a very effective way to reach the un (and underbanked) clientele of rural women.
Stay tuned for our next blog on how these women are adopting mobile money and how bank and non-bank e-money wallet issuers have customised their technology solutions to suit women’s requirements.
Looking forward to your next article on how these women are spreading the Joy of Safe ePayments in Bharat
The women should also be sensitized in basic AML scenarios
Please send me the report on financial inclusion regularly.
This is good step for economic growth, But as we know that India is a big country so we need more company which helps in financial inclusion like InstantPay. This company is also working in the field of financial inclusion.
Worshipful sir, now that all countries are updated with high end technologies, collaboration for all kinds of woman empowerment in the world is sustainable development. Required international funding for further development of woman is important.