Gateway to Financial Innovations for Savings (GAFIS)

In the GAFIS project, BFA Global worked with bank executives and staff to design savings products to serve low-income customers of five commercial banks in diverse markets with over USD$256 billion in combined assets and over 60million accounts. BFA Global developed pro-forma investment business cases for each low-income customer segment at individual, portfolio, and institution-wide levels. With BFA Global’s detailed analysis of products and compatible distribution channel delivery systems, the banks were able to implement targeted, cost-effective pilot programs for the new products and have experienced significant growth in the number of customers and active accounts year over year.

Findings and Key Takeaways:

• The project generated over 470,000 new poor savers across all the partner institutions.
• A robust and effective peer network was set up and 
• leveraged by all partner institutions.
• Technical assistance in deploying new channels for low-income clients was deployed.
• New knowledge about how to reach low-income clients was generated.
• A better understanding of the challenge of large financial institutions to serve the poor was captured in several outputs.

Insights

• GAFIS Focus Note 1
• GAFIS Focus Note 2
• GAFIS Focus Note 3
• GAFIS Focus Note 4
• GAFIS Presentation