Branchless Banking Agents’ Profile, Limitations, and Potential for Agent Network Expansion and Improvement

Policy reports suggest that agent network size, distribution, sustainability, service reliability, quality and demographics are important determinants of their performance. However, the available causal evidence on what interventions could be used to increase agent’s performance is still scarce. With the current pilot project, the research team will continue a long-standing collaboration with one of Indonesia’s biggest state-owned banks, managing more than 50 thousand agents across Indonesia, to examine the bank agents’ profile and understand the challenges faced by bank agents on-the-ground. This project will launch an exploratory online and phone survey with a sample of branchless banking agents, which will help to gather insights to design a randomized evaluation that will ultimately support the bank’s agent network expansion and branchless banking product’s take-up, in particular this preliminary study will help to gather insights and to design a randomized evaluation that will ultimately support the bank’s agent network expansion and branchless banking product’s take-up.