Customer-Centricity for Financial Inclusion

This brief discusses the importance of customer-centricity among financial service providers while catering to customers from the base of the social and economic pyramid (BOP). It emphasizes that financial service providers serving this important customer segment must invest in understanding these customers’ needs and develop products that meet those needs. It also states that an understanding of how access to financial services can add value to the lives of low-income customers is the first step in the journey to customer-centricity for financial service providers. The brief covers the following sections in detail:

• How the BOP is different from other customer segments and what it means to be customer-centric for the BOP;
• How to become a customer-centric provider with a focus on understanding customers;
• Reorienting operations around customers with a focus on leadership and culture, customer experience, operating models, and financial capability;
• Checklist to determine whether an institution is customer centric;
• Discussion of possible business cases to develop customer centric organizations and recommendations for providers to be more customer oriented with a focus on using IT, data analytics, and changing profitability analysis.