insight2impact Banking Data Facility Opens in South Africa

Financial inclusion bodies the FinMark Trust and Cenfri have launched the 'insight2impact' (i2i) data facility in South Africa, to help financial services organisations understand and respond to the banking needs of poor clients.

Funded with a $9.6m grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, the new i2i facility will aim to demonstrate how financial service providers can draw customer insights from current data sets, and use them in product design and business decisions that offer clients services that meet their needs.

Through the scheme, the partners hope to understand how poor people in developing countries interact with financial institutions, and ensure those people gain access to secure, affordable and convenient financial services in the future.

Herman Smit (pictured), Technical Director of Cenfri and interim lead of i2i, comments: 'In most developing countries, limited insights on new consumer segments undermine the ability of the financial sector to best serve them. We believe through this pioneering collaboration we can work with financial service providers to improve our understanding of how they can best serve these new consumer segments through the use of data.'

Web sites: www.mastercardfdn.org , www.finmark.org.za and www.cenfri.org .