The project aims to identify key challenges and opportunities in the onboarding process and produce actionable and localized insights that directly benefit digital financial inclusion activities. Unbanked and underbanked included here are farmers, informal workers, micro-entrepreneurs, and economically inactive (Students & Wife). The project also focuses on more rural areas where the conventional banking infrastructure is typically lower. The research is done in parallel in 4 different countries which has big number of unbanked underbanked population: Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Uganda.

The research is conducted in 3 provinces: North Sumatra, East Java and South Sulawesi, as representative of the west, central and east region of Indonesia to best represent the geographical context. This locations are selected as they have barriers in limited banking infrastructure, low economy and financial literacy but have good internet penetration and digital availability as the basic requirements of the adoption. 

The thick research uses an ethnographic approach to discover and document the onboarding journey of different segments in different services (agri-tech, mobile & digital banking, digital wallet, digital lending, QRIS, and government aid – PKH & Prakerja).

ECOSYSTEM & STAKEHOLDER LEVEL

As support systems and infrastructure are crucial in digital financial services adoption, we started by understanding the context and mapping the ecosystem. This includes observing the infrastructure in the system, their roles, the communication used, etc. From our initial landscape mapping, we identified several key stakeholders and gathered data through transect walk, shadowing, and in-depth interviews with key government and service providers stakeholders.

PRODUCT AND PERSONAL LEVEL

Understanding the products / services used and deep dive into the target group context, literacy and behaviors towards DFS as well as the detailed onboarding process. In this phase, we also dug deeper into findings from the ecosystem mapping and stakeholder & provider discovery. The data was collected from various methods such as intercepts, Focus Group Discussions, shadowing, fly on the wall to In-depth interviews.

How are podcasts made around the world?  A podcast streaming platform engaged Reach Network to research to understand and find opportunities in the podcast creation process and monetization in 6 countries (US, UK, Japan, India, Brazil, Indonesia), where Somia researched and documented the study in Indonesia and helped to facilitate in the global synthesis process. This is the first time the platform has initiated an exploratory approach for their product in this topic.

To make sure we get the most from the initiative, the project project was broken up into 2 phases. The first one is desk research followed up with remote interviews with the content creators. This is to get an initial understanding and know which topics we should dig deeper into in the second phase with the ethnographic approach, visiting and observing directly in the content creator environment.

To be able to capture the richness and complexity of the topic being covered, we used a filmmaking approach when the content creators explained and shared their practices. Film clips are aimed to get the client a deep understanding of the content creators’ environment, creation process, and the way they interact with their audiences.