Empowering rural women 👩🏻💪🏻💰

Audience deep dive
Service strategy


For years, a bank provided micro-loans to women entrepreneurs in rural Indonesia but knew little about them beyond business metrics. Now, the bank seeks deeper insights into these women and their communities to enhance existing services and explore new offerings.


Brief
  • Understand the women’s experience with the loans, their attitudes toward it, and their repayment strategies
  • Understand life in rural communities and identify new opportunities for the bank
  • Provide guidelines for improving the bank's existing services and launching new offerings
       
Approach
  • Financial diary Gain behavioural insights by having the women track their finances for a couple of weeks
  • Ethnography Understanding how the community thrives, fulfills life needs, and identify gaps
  • In-depth interview Understanding the women’ values, beliefs, and attitude towards money
  • ‘Key actors’ interview Community ‘eyes and ears’ e.g. elders, peddlers, loan sharks, religous leaders

         
Talking to loan sharks, as depicted in this TV series, offers insights into rural communities' financial needs. Photo: Indosiar


Outcome
  • Visually rich report on the life of rural communities + identified business opportunites for the bank
  • A guide to understanding how the women view and manage money + reccomendations on how the bank can improve repayment rates
  • Workshop to co-develop service concepts & storyboards with the bank’s teams