Adekunle Alarapon (ACIB, CDEF) is Head of Retail Segments for Wema Financial institution Plc, the place he holds obligations for Agent Banking & Monetary Inclusion, Gaming & Leisure Enterprise, Office Banking and Feminine Gender (Sara) Propositions. Mr. Alarapon has greater than 20 years of banking expertise in operations, management, business, retail and digital banking. He’s an Affiliate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, the place he acquired an award in Technique & Management; a member of the Chartered Institute of Administration Accountants, UK; and an Affiliate Member of the Nigeria Institute of Administration. He additionally has a Certificates in Digital Digital Finance from the Frankfurt Enterprise College in Germany.
Mr. Alarapon lately spoke at our 2023 Ladies’s World Banking Making Finance Work for Ladies Summit in Mumbai, India, the place he was part of our Ladies-Centered Design for Industrial Viability Workshop. We’re thrilled to attach as soon as extra with Mr. Alarapon for his insights on how women-centered design can form holistic or “hybrid” monetary options—that’s, options that bridge the hole between the digital and the bodily—and focus on how these options ought to meet girls prospects the place they’re at of their monetary journeys to be actually efficient.
Q: The fast transformation towards digital monetary options could also be forsaking low-income girls who don’t have handy or dependable entry to digital choices—if they’ve entry in any respect. GSMA’s newest analysis notes a stall in progress in closing the gender hole in cell phone possession and utilization (the first manner each women and men entry the web in low- and middle-income nations): As of 2021, they reported girls in Sub-Saharan African nations have been much less seemingly than males to personal a cell phone and fewer seemingly to make use of cell web after they did personal a telephone by 37% in each eventualities—leaving 192 million girls on this area with out cell web. How can monetary providers suppliers (FSPs) deal with points in entry to make sure that they’re nonetheless capable of attain and have interaction all girls prospects? Do bodily touchpoints play a component?
The monetary inclusion panorama in Nigeria and in most of Sub-Saharan Africa remains to be closely depending on bodily person-to-person (P2P) interplay. Therefore, a successful system could be the institution of what Wema Financial institution calls “Phygital” facilities—our self-service in-branch platform that mixes the perfect facets of conventional and digital banking—throughout geographies and placement, serving to to assist girls’s participation in monetary and financial inclusion.
Wema Financial institution’s Phygital Branches, known as ALAT HUB, are geared up with digital gadgets that supply prospects extra alternative for a way they like to financial institution, enabling girls who could also be skeptical of solely digital capabilities to get pleasure from essential monetary providers, akin to account opening, card issuance, money withdrawals and deposits, interbank transfers, micro-savings and loans, micro-insurance, financial institution inquiries, and many others. in individual, however faster and extra seamlessly due to the know-how. It is a inventive manner of delivering these providers through a digital channel that’s in a extra acquainted atmosphere.
Q: Say there’s a monetary establishment that has a digital resolution with nice potential to drive monetary inclusion for last-mile girls prospects, however they don’t have any bodily touchpoints embedded within the resolution course of. Would you anticipate this product to come across any challenges?
To be sincere, I see some disadvantages within the capability of such merchandise to scale quick exterior of city areas within the quick future. Nonetheless, as adoption of digital capabilities expands, suburban communities are likely to see a rise in utilization. Therefore, the design of digital options should contemplate the social-cultural behaviors and monetary wants of the common African girl to make sure scalability from city to suburban areas, and ultimately to rural prospects.
Q: For a lot of low-income girls prospects, partaking recurrently with monetary establishments and their choices might be intimidating, and common monetary literacy applications could show overwhelming. How can FSPs leverage each in-person and digital options to offer focused functionality constructing—so girls get solely the data they want, proper after they want it?
This should begin with the coaching of FSP personnel on the strategies and kinds of gross sales dynamics/pitches to low-income girls. There’s a want to begin with constructing belief and relationships with the ladies; as soon as established, product choices might be launched utilizing a trusted beneficiary/product-user as a reference level. This may be carried out by making a small group of ladies “ambassadors” or brokers inside the group.
Q: Key moments, akin to signing up for an account or conducting the primary transaction, are essential to constructing girls prospects’ confidence and belief—and these advantages could also be misplaced when such moments are solely performed digitally. Ladies’s World Banking analysis exhibits that sure bodily touchpoints, like working with girls banking brokers, may help construct belief with girls prospects and the monetary system. How can FSPs leverage these in-person experiences to encourage the transition to utilizing digital options as effectively?
The usage of girls banking brokers has develop into one of the crucial magical strategies for partaking low-income girls in monetary services and products. FSPs ought to develop frameworks that entice and encourage girls brokers to their community, and that assist them function advocates for the supplier. This might embrace designing agent banking kits, akin to waist pouches, aprons and scarves as model identifiers for girls brokers. Ladies brokers are then inspired to succeed in out to girls inside their communities and train them the best way to use digital gadgets throughout group conferences and social events.
Q: In lots of rising economies, it is sensible to keep up bodily touchpoints and extra conventional options that ladies prospects are sometimes extra accustomed to. Nonetheless, we all know that digital options can typically cut back entry boundaries for low-income girls and cut back long-term prices for suppliers. Are you able to inform us of a use case from Nigeria the place Wema Financial institution blended these moments, bodily and digital, in a manner that delivered a tailor-made buyer expertise, reasonably than creating two parallel choices (in-person vs. digital)?
Wema Financial institution, together with Ladies’s World Banking and the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis, designed a micro-savings pockets for low-income girls, known as NAIRA ASIDE. The product allows girls to avoid wasting between $1 and $20 (in Naira equivalence) each day by Wema financial institution brokers (ALAT HUBS) situated inside their communities. These financial savings are made within the type of money deposits into their digital wallets through in-person brokers and obtain the worth of their accounts immediately. Ladies are inspired to comply with by with this each day financial savings sample for a predetermined interval of three or six months.
Q: As famous in our Summit workshop, enabling girls to realize higher entry to finance might unlock US$330 billion in annual world income. Are you able to spotlight among the enterprise advantages for FSPs after they ship holistic monetary options (bodily and digital resolution parts) that present girls prospects with the “better of each worlds”?
There are big advantages opened for FSPs after they ship holistic monetary options that present girls prospects entry to monetary providers. These embrace however should not restricted to alternatives for worldwide collaboration with different like-minded establishments; micro and macroeconomic enlargement for the FSP; and affiliation with governmental and non-governmental establishments.
Q: How does the flexibleness provided by holistic monetary options—with digital and bodily parts—in the end assist girls’s financial empowerment?
Ladies’s financial empowerment is supported by monetary options which are intentionally designed with girls in thoughts. These supply versatile engagement and allow a straightforward walkthrough of the consumer journey that makes digital entry enjoyable and attention-grabbing, reasonably than a compelling monetary proposition. Human beings react to adjustments in numerous methods and it’s typically tougher to simply adapt to new strategies the older we develop into. Therefore, digital monetary options should be provided in enjoyable and attention-grabbing methods as early as attainable that endear curiosity amongst girls prospects particularly through the use of the acquainted comfortable mechanisms of constructing mutual belief, relationship, security and reassurances.
Thanks, Mr. Alarapon, in your time and insights!