Financial Literacy: A Step for Clients towards Financial Inclusion

identify causes of over-indebtedness and capacity. (Clients of CRECER jumped from
23% to 40% while those of Pro Mujer climbed from 45 percent to 79 percent.).
Clients of the three institutions also showed improvements in their savings behaviors.
CRECER and Pro Mujer clients --post-post test-- both put more of their earnings into
savings (31 to 47 percent for CRECER clients and 40 to 57 percent for Pro Mujer clients)
and the number of SEEDS clients who indicated they saved more money in the current
quarter compared to last quarter jumped by 16 percent (Gray et al, 2009).
While these outcomes are promising, many other factors could be influencing them. (See
Table 3). For example, the increase in number of savers reported by AMFIU and OIBM
could have been affected by aggressive marketing and product promotion efforts. In
Bolivia and Sri Lanka, clients report that contextual factors such as inflation and rising
food prices prevented them from saving regularly, even though they clearly understood
the benefits of doing so. The same held true for managing their debt as Gray et al explain
in their 2009 study:
When clients from all three institutions were interviewed in FGDs about the
challenges of debt management, all three cohorts indicated that the food and fuel
crises that their countries were experiencing during this time period significantly
inhibited their abilities to control their debt simply because everything was much
more expensive and some were having to take out loans for basic needs such as
food. They all appeared to understand and appreciate the concept of managing
one’s debt, but some had difficulty putting it into practice (Gray et al, 2009).
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