Monique Cohen

Monique Cohen is President of Microfinance Opportunities, a nonprofit founded in 2002. She is a recognized expert on the use of financial services and client assessment, including market research and impact assessment in microfinance. Dr. Cohen is an authority on market demand for microinsurance nd has pioneered the introduction of financial education for the poor. She designed and led the AIMS project at USAID in Washington from 1994 to 2002. She is co-author with Jennefer Sebstad of Microfinance, Risk Management and Poverty and Reducing Vulnerability, the Demand for Microinsurance. Dr. Cohen has taught at the Boulder Microfinance Training Program and has a Ph. D. from Clark University.

By Monique Cohen

Research

Enabling Customer Empowerment: Choice, Use, and Voice

This exploratory Brief reflects our hypothesis that customer empowerment—here defined as a process that builds customer trust and confidence through an interactive relationship between providers and their customers—can lead to a win-win for both providers and customers.
Blog

Three Ways Financial Service Providers Can Empower Customers

Ensuring that digital financial services are used successfully by poor communities requires a new customer-centric approach. Financial service providers can empower customers to engage with new technology and financial services in several ways.
Blog

From Access to Active Use: The Need for Customer Empowerment

Enabling customers to empower themselves calls for a more interactive and dynamic relationship between provider and customer.
Blog

Diversity Is In

Moving clients to the center of the microfinance discourse is producing new data on who they are and how they use (or could use) financial services.
Blog

Linking Financial Behaviors to Product Development

The Financial Diaries methodology is increasingly recognized by financial service providers and analysts as a powerful method to collect sequential, spatial, and social network data on economic transactions, to pinpoint drivers of uptake and to analyze usage trends.