Can Big Data Shape Financial Services in East Africa?

Every minute of every day millions of users in Africa create digital data. This new data is creating opportunities for alternative "big data" to catalyze an expansion of financial services to low-income and hard to reach populations.

This Focus Note discusses the potential of big data analytics in financial services in greater detail. It shows what 30 leading organizations — including Kenyan and Tanzanian banks, microfinance institutions, mobile network operators, and FinTech organizations — think about big data and analytics and how they use (and how they don’t use) big data. More specifically, the Focus Note sets out to answer the following questions: 

• What types of data, particularly what types of big data, are being used?
• Are the benefits tangible — how do the results from big data compare to those of traditional underwriting methods?
• What costs and risks exist? Is a market for data developing?