How to Succeed in Your Digital Journey: A Series of Toolkits for Financial Service Providers - Toolkit #4: Develop Own Agent Network
This toolkit is the fourth in a series of six toolkits aimed at supporting financial institutions (FIs) to go digital. 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, and Toolkit #3: Leverage an Existing Agent Network describes agency banking, where agents (of a mobile network operator, payment service provider or financial institution) assist clients with the transactions if needed. This toolkit describes the fourth model that a financial institution can choose: to develop its own (proprietary) agent network. In this model, a financial institution identifies, recruits, trains, brands and manages its own network of third-party agents through which to distribute its financial products and services.
Toolkit #4 consists of two documents:
- Business Case: Describes the business model and recipe for success. International examples from Equity Bank in Kenya and FINCA in the United Republic of Tanzania and Democratic Republic of the Congo illustrate how to successfully implement this model.
- Case Studies: Describes the detailed cases of NBS Bank in Malawi and Microcred in Senegal, which have developed their own network of agents, and highlights the case of Caisse d’Epargne et de Crédit in Cameroon, which is in the process of implementing its own network of roving and fixed agents.
