Though financial inclusion is targeted at the poor, very little is understood about their financial lives. This month the lead pieces are from MicroSave highlighting the inherent thought process in financial decision making and management by the poor, these can help design appropriate products and services: a) a paper by Akhand Tiwari, Akhilesh Singh, Mukul Singh, Nitish Narain and Ritika Srivastava that identifies the information sources used in the rural poor's financial decision making process, that ultimately determine the adoption of financial products and services and b) analysis from Ignacio Mas and Premasis Mukherjee's creative research project Metamon that brings out how the poor manage their resources and day to day finances.
Akhand Tiwari, Akhilesh Singh, Mukul Singh, Nitish Narain and Ritika Srivastava discuss the various formal and informal information sources on service providers, financial products and services. This paper provides insightful advice for financial service providers on spreading awareness and then convincing customers to try new products.
The Metamon (money management metaphor) project aims at understanding the thought process behind day to day financial management. This paper by Ignacio Mas and Premasis Mukherjee brings out insights on how ordinary people manage their monetary and non monetary resources given all the constraints and available information.
Section I: Policy - the latest from India's policymakers
The monthly newsletter from the Indicus Centre for Financial Inclusion documents the latest news and views in the financial inclusion space, to provide a knowledge base that will help build understanding around how to accelerate the poor's access to high-quality financial services.
The Indicus Centre for Financial Inclusion was launched in 2011 to distil and disseminate information on accelerating the poor's access to high-quality financial services. The Centre is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. http://www.indicus.net/icfi
