Working with The Poorest Women in Pakistan

CGAP recently commissioned our design firm, Continuum Innovation, to complete a research project that used applied product innovation techniques to identify the constraints of linking these government-to-person (G2P) payments to financial inclusion. Be sure to read the preceding post, Literacy a Hidden Hurdle to Financial Inclusion.

We recently completed a project for CGAP that used applied product innovation techniques to finding ways to help government-to-person (G2P) beneficiaries in Pakistan. The insights from this research provide a nuanced understanding of the difficulties of providing financial services to the very poorest in a society, specifically the barriers that come from extreme illiteracy. This research is applicable not only to other G2P payment providers and government ministries, but also to any financial provider that seeks to design a product that meets the needs and the capabilities of low-income clients.

How can G2P payments be used to build financial inclusion? The government of Pakistan established the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) in 2008 to distribute cash payments to low-income families. BISP pays poor families 3,000 PKRs every three months, which is a little over $10 a month per family. Soon the amount will be increased to 3,500 PKRs—about $12 a month. Currently about 5 million families receive BISP payments. The project focused on helping impoverished women in Pakistan who depend on these small BISP payments to learn how to use a bank: how to get their money out of the bank, but also how to keep some of their money in the bank as savings. We hypothesized that women who were part of the banking system would be able to save more safely than by storing cash in their home and would be able to make payments more conveniently. The project involved working closely with Habib Bank Limited (HBL)—one of the distributors of BISP payments.

BISP recipients live in stark poverty: the family income of the people we met was typically less than $4 per day. The way these families think about and interact with the world is different from the way we do. We needed to get close to the recipients to understand their lives and build empathy with them so that we could find ways to help them to connect to the banking system. We spent about five weeks in southern Punjab, talking with women in poor areas around Lahore and Multan and looking for ways to help them. It was a process: we slowly began to see the world through their eyes.

We found that basic tasks for most people in developed economies—going to a bank or an agent, using an ATM, punching in a PIN code, reading a receipt—are huge hurdles for the women we met. These women, for the most part, are illiterate and disempowered. Despite well-meaning efforts, the banks and BISP have been slow to accommodate the needs of their customers, and many small glitches in their operations are hurting BISP recipients. The system is slowly getting better, and some very committed people in banking and in the Pakistan government are determined to make significant improvements.

All of the women interviewed were grateful for the BISP payments, but they also did not trust BISP because of the irregularity of their payments. When a payment was not available on time, they did not know why this was the case—had they done something wrong, had someone else taken the money, had they been disqualified from the program, or had the money not arrived yet? Also, most women did not know how to get their money from an ATM on their own, or did not understand what was happening when they got their money from an agent. The women’s illiteracy was compounded by their lack of personal agency, which made them vulnerable to the person helping them at an ATM, the agent, or their husband or other person who took control of their BISP debit card. As a result, even though most women did save in their home, they were not yet ready to save at a bank.

At the start of this project we thought that mobile phones could be a low-cost and convenient way for women in remote areas to interact with a bank. However, we soon learned that many of these women did not have a phone and did not know how to use one. As smart phones penetrate even the poorest and most remote parts of Pakistan, phone banking may then be an option, but mobile banking for this population is not viable in the near term.

Although the women were all illiterate and unfamiliar with basic technology, this does not mean they are not able to learn or lacked other forms of knowledge. One old village woman in particular who had lived her entire life in the country was completely illiterate and could not use a cell phone. However, she was proud and confident, and when we described some financial products to her in a way she could understand, she immediately understood how to use them to her advantage in ways that our team had not anticipated.

Despite these barriers, most of the women wanted to be able to manage their money themselves and they understood that a bank is the best place to save money. After analyzing the results of the study, we arrived at four recommendations to help these women make the most of their G2P payments and their resulting inclusion into the banking system: (1) ensure BISP payments follow a regular, published schedule; (2) use photographic instructions to teach BISP recipients how to use an ATM or an agent; (3) increase transparency in the system by making it easier for BISP recipients to know how much money they have in their accounts and understand how much money was withdrawn, for example, by providing receipts with simple, large text of only the most relevant information; and (4) offer simple savings products and a loan product that provide options for BISP recipients. These recommendations are a natural extension of how recipients are thinking about their interactions with the bank today. With these changes in place, the BISP program could be an effective stepping-stone to fuller financial inclusion. And with the ability to control their money, perhaps these women will develop a greater sense of personal agency.

Harry West and Rachel Lehrer work for Continuum Innovation.