Malawi

Beginning in 2007, Opportunity International Bank of Malawi (OIBM) started an innovative banking practice by serving rural areas in Malawi with a full-service bank on wheels -mobile bank. Between 2007 to 2010, the IRIS center and MFO conducted several studies to understand the access, use, welfare outcomes and impacts of OIBM's mobile services. Results are summarized in a series of papers and research briefs produced under the project.

Landscape and enabling environment: Using qualitative tools and an inductive approach, IRIS center and MFO conducted studies to map out the financial landscape and enabling environment in Malawi.

Welfare outcomes: Using extensive data gathered through Financial Diaries, MFO explored the extent to which the mobile bank of OIBM added value to their clients. The transactions data (all inflows and outflows, including use of financial services) were gathered on a weekly basis from about 200 low-income households, half of whom were OIBM clients using the mobile bank, for 18 months over 2008-09.

Welfare Impact: IRIS conducted a study to understand the outreach of mobile services, and welfare impact of households' access and use of the mobile bank on food security, ability to cope with negative shocks, and asset accumulation among the OIBM clients. The impact study used a cluster matched randomized encouragement design to gather quantitative panel data from 2,100 randomly selected households in Central Malawi where the mobile bank operates. An intense information campaign to disseminate information regarding OIBM's mobile bank and its financial products and services was conducted in a randomly selected subset of 59 clusters while 59 clusters were held as control group.

Papers

Effects of Savings on Consumption, Production, and Food Security: Evidence from Rural Malawi

by Arthur Shaw and Geetha Nagarajan

Measuring Spillover Impacts of Formal Savings in Rural Malawi: Effects on the most Vulnerable Non-Users

by Jeffrey A. Flory

Do Formal Savings Feed Food Security? Evidence from a Matched Pair, Cluster-Randomized Encouragement Trial in Rural Malawi

by Arthur Shaw and Jose Manuel Romero

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Malawi

Papers

Effects of Savings on Consumption, Production, and Food Security: Evidence from Rural Malawi

Measuring Spillover Impacts of Formal Savings in Rural Malawi: Effects on the most Vulnerable Non-Users

Do Formal Savings Feed Food Security? Evidence from a Matched Pair, Cluster-Randomized Encouragement Trial in Rural Malawi

Impact of Micro-Savings on Shock Coping Strategies in Rural Malawi

Rural Finance Outreach in Central Malawi: Implications for Opportunity International Bank of Malawi

Branchless Banking and Rural Outreach in Malawi: Opportunity International Bank of Malawi's Impact on the Market

Cash In, Cash Out: Financial Transactions and Access to Finance in Malawi

Does Intense Marketing Increase Outreach? The Case of Opportunity International Bank in Rural Malawi

Financial Landscape Report: Malawi

Who Does Formal Finance Reach in Rural Malawi?

The Poor and Their Management of Shocks

Constant Gardening: A Study of Malawi's Enabling Environment for Microfinance

Briefs

Useful Lump Sums: Microenterprise Revenue Management And Its Potential For Banks

Intense Information Campaign Increases Microfinance Outreach in Rural Malawi

Convenience Reconsidered: Some Findings on Formal vs Informal Financial Services from the Financial Diaries

Managing Vulnerability: Using Financial Diaries to inform Innovative Products For the Poor

Microfinance & Gender: Some Findings from the Financial Diaries in Malawi

Not Just for a Rainy Day: Some Findings on the Role of Savings from the Financial Diaries in Malawi