Guide / Toolkit

How to Succeed in Your Digital Journey: A Series of Toolkits for Financial Services Providers - Toolkit #2: Be an Agent

Guidance for financial institutions interested in acting as digital finance agents

This toolkit is the second in a series of six practical toolkits aimed at supporting financial service providers (FSPs) eager to make headway towards digital finance yet uncertain how to go about it. With this series of digital finance toolkits, a financial institution will be able to choose the best business model based on an assessment of its environment (political, economic, social, technological, and regulatory), objectives, capacity and readiness to carry out the efforts required.

The first two business models of this framework Toolkit #1: Use Mobile as a Tool and Toolkit #2: Be an Agent, consist in using mobile as a service where basic transactions are performed by staff of the FSP using mobile devices. "Be an Agent" is one of the simpler methods FSPs can utilize. In this model, the FSP acts as an agent for a digital financial service provider (often a mobile network operator) and offers the provider’s products and services through the FSP’s own branch network.

Toolkit #2 consists of two main documents:

  • Part 1: Describes the business model and recipe for success. It includes two case studies, one from SOFIPE in Burkina Faso and the other from UGAFODE in Uganda, illustrating how to implement this model.
  • Part 2: Describes the detailed case of Trust Savings Credit Union (TSCU) in Liberia, a UNCDF MicroLead partner. It also outlines the case of a large microfinance institution in Mali, Kafo Jiginew.