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28 Aug 2018
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Financial Education for Low-Income People

The Swiss Capacity Building Facility (SCBF) is a unique non-profit association that fosters income and employment generation through financial inclusion in emerging and developing countries. The SCBF assists financial institutions in significantly scaling up their outreach to poor people, with a clear social mission to serve women and rural areas, smallholder farmers, as well as micro- and small enterprises.


Another focus of the SCBF is financial education for low-income people. To facilitate knowledge exchange among SCBF partners on innovative, digital financial education methodologies and tools, the SCBF organized a two-day workshop in June, at the residence of the Swiss Ambassador in Rabat, Morocco. Discussion points were digital prototypes of financial education tools, like e-learning platforms and gaming apps, that can be fine-tuned by different actors according to local socio-cultural conditions.


The workshop was organized to showcase the work of different financial institutions, which presented their current financial education business strategy, digital tools and lessons learnt. Prototypes of e-learning platforms and app-based financial education games were presented. On the second day, the focus was on how to go forward in financial education and on global evolving trends and innovations in the delivery of effective financial education. Thereby, the related key success factors and challenges from a human resources viewpoint where discussed. The rest of the workshop was driven by different working-groups exchanging know-how and expertise. Finally, and most importantly for SCBF, participants identified ways in which SCBF can best facilitate technical support and knowledge exchange.



The first lesson learned from the workshop highlighted the importance of finding the right partnerships to grow from the very beginning and having a strategic vision focused on consistency and long-term sustainability. Further, financial education should be a continuous engagement with clients and, critically, education should be fun! The best way to expand the financial education outreach is to use digital channels, comics and games. And finally, local language is key and must be adapted to real life in the local context (e.g. local Arabic vs classical Arabic).

The full workshop material, including slides, pictures and videos are soon available on the SCBF website.



Created 28/08/2018 by Huwiler Franziska EDA HUZ
Last modified 29/09/2018 by Hochhuth Stefan