Information Systems

For the rapidly evolving digital financial services industry, data analytics holds a lot of promise. It can produce necessary business intelligence for service providers to fine-tune product development, sharpen marketing efforts, and improve the strategy to better reach the unbanked. Big data analysis may be particularly useful to better target potential new users. Big data is a big topic. Rarely a day passes without news of innovative applications of the data we all produce through our frequent use of technology. It is also increasingly recognized that effective analysis of large amounts of technology-generated data can support efforts promoting development. By the very nature of the business, the (Digital Financial Services) DFS industry produces a multitude of data that can be helpful in advancing its business goals and financial inclusion. Most DFS providers in Sub-Saharan Africa specifically target the previously unbanked – consumers the financial industry has previously kn...

Introduction In Africa, Digital Financial Services (DFS) providers are making efforts to increase financial inclusion. One of the banks is expanding its presence geographically to reach the unbanked and under-banked; and to this end, carefully planning where to recruit and place agents in various parts of the country.  The bank is specifically targeting areas with low rates of financial inclusion. Having a vast network of effective agents will also allow their branches to focus on higher-value activities, further strengthening their financial ecosystem. A mobile network operator (MNO) is undertaking initiatives to increase the adoption of mobile money among its customers and wants to have measures of the local likelihood of mobile money adoption for each cell tower. In both cases, these institutions have found value in having an interactive map that plots the entities of interests (like concentrations of unbanked individuals) and data associated with those entities (...