South African Financial Diaries and the Mzansi Initiative: Five Years Later

This report examines usage and savings patterns of the Mzansi account holders in South Africa. The Mzansi account is an entry-level bank account that was launched collaboratively by South Africa's four largest commercial banks and the state-owned Postbank in 2004.

The report is based on a household-level panel data set called the Financial Diaries. The initial dataset obtained in 2004 was complemented by a round of “revisit” interviews in 2009. Key findings include:

• General increase in income across the sample;
• Increase in income appears to have translated into higher rates of savings;
• Substantial parts of new savings go to bank accounts;
• Evidence is weak on whether increase in bank usage and savings can be attributed to Mzansi;
• Proximity of branches increases bank usage;
• Factors such as better roads between villages and towns may contribute to bank usage.

It states that the Financial Diaries dataset provides insights into the contribution of financial inclusion policies to higher formal financial instrument use, and acts as a benchmark for the rate of change of household savings patterns.