CGAP Insights: How do Policy Makers Learn and Adapt Today?

Policy makers are playing a leading role in extending access to financial services to the 1.7 billion adults who remain unbanked, globally. Effective policies and regulations that promote financial inclusion present a key pathway to unlocking positive development outcomes. However, this is often an uphill challenge for policy makers as they have to balance multiple objectives, including financial stability, integrity and consumer protection. This challenge has grown bigger recently as the world of financial inclusion keeps moving forward, bringing along new opportunities paired with new risks. The lack of capacity to design and implement responsive and forward-looking policy environments is often cited as a key challenge, hindering the goal of universal financial inclusion. While there are several actors who are currently organizing capacity building activities, many continue to note that the pace of progress is not fast enough.

In this context, CGAP commissioned Dalberg to conduct a study to help better understand how different types of policy makers learn and prefer to build their skills. The Dalberg team conducted semi-structured interviews with policy makers across a diverse set of 10 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East, and Europe to better understand their backgrounds, their aspirations and their needs to grow and succeed in their current and future roles. The team supplemented this approach with extensive desk research and interviews on the current state of capacity building in each of their countries.

The detailed findings are presented in the final report divided into six sections: Section 1 introduces the study, Dalberg’s approach, and methodological considerations. Section 2 discusses the key attributes and evaluation criteria to delineate distinct policy maker personas, Section 3 describes each of the personas including their current approach and preferences in gathering information and building skills, Section 4 analyses several internal and external variables that may inform the persona distribution observed and their evolution over time, Section 5 presents the implications and recommendations considering the demand for knowledge products and capacity building activities across personas, and Section 6 highlights the conclusions and next steps emerging from the study.

Disclaimer

This work was funded in whole or in part by CGAP. Unlike CGAP's official publications, it has not been peer reviewed or edited by CGAP, and any conclusions or viewpoints expressed are those of the authors, and they may or may not reflect the views of CGAP staff.