Driving Financial Resilience Through Formal Savings Among the Low-Income Population

Scale2Save defines financial resilience as “the ability to meet daily and lifecycle needs, build assets, cope with unexpected expenditure and shocks and invest for the future.” This requires people to have access to services that allow them to manage their risks such as savings accounts and insurance. In 2021, Scale2Save engaged Marketshare Associates (MSA) to conduct intensive customer research in five countries of its operation: Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and Uganda. This paper provides a synthesis of research findings that help understand to what extent savings allowed customers to increase their financial resilience with an emphasis on customer segmentation.