Information is a key component of any functional market: quality information can provide the necessary incentives to market actors to enter a market, expand offerings, and innovate. Conversely, the lack of reliable quality information can lead to thin or absent markets, which is the case today with financial service markets that fail to serve the poor and low-income populations.

This blog series is designed to help donors working on financial inclusion explore and better understand the role of information in spurring growth and innovation in financial markets for the poor. In the following weeks, the blogs in this series will illustrate how a funder or facilitator can effectively intervene at the market level, drawing on real world examples of successful and unsuccessful efforts to build financially inclusive markets through improving information collection and analysis and information flows.