The Savings Learning Lab was led by Itad in partnership with the SEEP Network. It supported learning among the Foundation’s savings sector portfolio programmes and the wider sector through a range of activities.
Itad led activities included the generation of targeted learning briefs, synthesising evidence from across the savings portfolio, facilitating peer-learning, hosting webinars, curating a Savings Evidence Map and carrying our project evaluations.
The SEEP Network led the learning agenda with the wider sector, hosting webinars, leading ‘Peer Learning Groups’ and organising Savings Groups Conferences with sponsorship from the Savings Learning Lab.
About the Savings Learning Lab
Savings are critical for poor people’s resilience, consumption smoothing, risk management and financing of important life goals such as education and starting a business. However, poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to rely predominantly on informal savings and therefore do not benefit from formal financial services and products. Access to formal savings products is growing but many barriers remain and there is a need to build the global evidence base on what works and what doesn’t in expanding access and usage of both formal and informal savings mechanisms for the poor.
The Mastercard Foundation’s savings portfolio addressed the overarching challenge of financial exclusion of low-income customers, with a focus on formal and informal savings. These approaches evolved from an earlier focus on optimizing savings groups facilitation models, to supporting savings group linkage to a later focus on testing and proving scalable business models on the supply side.
The Mastercard Foundation Savings Learning Lab is a six-year initiative that supported learning among the Foundation’s savings sector portfolio programmes: Promoting Opportunities for Women’s Economic Empowerment in Rural Africa (POWER Africa) implemented by Care, Expanding Financial Inclusion (EFI) in Africa implemented by CRS, MicroLead implemented by UNCDF, Scale2Save, implemented by WSBI and Savings at the Frontier, implemented by OPM.
In addition, we also synthesised performance monitoring data and knowledge outputs across the portfolio of projects and facilitates cross-portfolio learning dialogue.
At the sector level, we developed the online Savings Evidence Map. This enables practitioners, researchers and policymakers to find existing evidence, see how the evidence is clustered as well as identify existing gaps. The Learning Lab also hosted webinars, supported the SEEP led Savings Group conferences and facilitated local stakeholder events convened around particular topics of interest of challenge to the sector.
Partner resources
Check out our partner websites for the latest resources from their programmes:
- Promoting Opportunities for Women’s Economic Empowerment in Rural Africa
- Expanding Financial Inclusion
- MicroLead
- Scale2Save
- Savings at the Frontier
Resources
The SLL generated learning on a wide range of topics related to savings focused financial inclusion. Broadly, these fit into the categories of: Business models for serving low income clients; Financial health and resilience; Evidence Mapping; Informal savings and Project Evaluations.
Please explore the resources within the categories below.
Business models for serving low income clients
- Savings products for Low-income countries: Can these be provided sustainably and at scale? (Publication)
- Leveraging high-performing agents to deliver customer value (Publication)
- Proven approaches to delivering inclusive finance – Video 1: Delivering value to low-income customers sustainably (Webinar)
- Proven approaches to delivering inclusive finance – Video 2: Spotlight on agricultural finance solutions (Webinar)
- Maintaining a Critical Link To Last-Mile Customers: Challenges and Opportunities Facing Financial Service Agents During COVID-19 (Blog)
- What do we mean by client empowerment in financial inclusion and how do we do it? (Blog)
- Stories of Bank Linkages (Blog)
- Increasing resilience through financial inclusion: Provider led-solutions from West Africa (Publication)
- Reaching Informal Savings Groups with Formal Financial Products: A Study’s Unexpected Findings Reveal the Challenges of Digitizing Transactions (Blog)
Financial health and resilience
- Evidence review: Savings and financial health (Publication)
- How Do Savings Contribute to Financial Health? (Blog)
- Savings and climate resilience – A review of successes and challenges in current programming (Publication)
- Increasing resilience through financial inclusion: Provider led-solutions from West Africa (Publication)
Evidence mapping
- Savings Evidence Map: Searchable tool (Tool)
- Savings Evidence Map: Rural Snapshot
- Savings Evidence Map: Gender Snapshot
- Savings Evidence Map: Youth Snapshot
- Savings for youth: a review of evidence executive summary
- Savings for youth: a review of evidence
- Savings Count: Trends in access, use and the ecosystem of savings in sub-Saharan Africa
- Evidence review: Savings and financial health
- Checking in with the Savings Evidence Map
- Savings in Sub-Saharan Africa: Key Insights from the Mastercard Foundation Savings Learning Lab (Blog)
Informal savings
- Savings products for Low-income customers: Can these be provided sustainably and at scale? (Publication)
- State of Practice: Savings Groups and the Role of Government in Sub-Saharan Africa (Publication)
- Peer Learning Group: The Role of Savings Groups in Supporting Graduation from Social Safety Nets Series (Publication)
- Savings Groups and Social Protection: Graduation from Safety Nets (Publication)
- Mentoring and Coaching: Supporting Graduation from Social Safety Nets through Savings Groups (Publication)
- Savings Groups in Graduation Programs: A Pathway to Inclusive Market (Publication)
- Reaching Informal Savings Groups with Formal Financial Products: A Study’s Unexpected Findings Reveal the Challenges of Digitizing Transactions (Blog)
Project evaluations
- Expanding financial inclusion in Africa: Ex-post evaluation (Publication)
- Expanding Financial Inclusion in Africa: Ex-post Evaluation Brief (Blog)
- Lessons from an ex-post evaluation (Blog)
- The EFI Project Unveiled – What Have We Done and What Did We Learn? (Blog)
Other
- Guide to Inclusive Savings (Blog)
- Human-centered design in international development: A review of what works and what doesn’t (Publication)
- Why human-centered design (HCD) doesn’t always work for international development (Blog)
- Getting It Right: Learning About Savings (Blog)
- Youth Financial Inclusion: What We’re Missing & How Can We Serve Them Better (Publication)
Contact James Robinson if you would like to discuss this project.