How to Succeed in Your Digital Journey: A Series of Toolkits for Financial Services Providers

This Briefing Note provides an introduction to the MicroLead Toolkits, a series of practical toolkits to spur digital initiatives among financial institutions eager to make headway towards digital finance yet uncertain how to go about it. With this series of 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), its objectives, capacity and readiness to carry out the efforts required.

MicroLead and PHB Development have identified six different DFS business models available to financial institutions:

1. Use Mobile as a Tool;
2. Be an Agent for an MNO or PSP (distribute an MNO’s or PSP’s products);
3. Leverage an Existing Agent Network (of a MNO or PSP);
4. Develop Own Agent Network;
5. Create Your Own Mobile Banking Channel;
6. Become a Digital Provider.

Each of these business models will be presented in a detailed toolkit, enabling financial service providers (FSPs) to understand the associated objectives, requirements and pre-requisites needed to be able to achieve the model’s goals. Toolkits will be an opportunity to shed light on the success factors, challenges and risks to anticipate as well as present mitigation strategies, while providing a series of functional tools such as assessment and diagnosis tools, a value proposition template, cost/benefit analysis spreadsheets, etc., to guide FSPs along their digital path.