IPA Consumer Protection Quarterly

What's New and What's Next

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New: Webinars in Finance and Development

From April 11-12, CPRI Director Paul Adams attended the second Webinars in Finance and Development (#WEFIDEV) workshop at Northwestern University. WEFIDEV is a regular webinar series for young scholars working on finance topics in low- and middle-income countries. This was their second in-person workshop to present and get feedback on early-stage research. Topics included debt restructuring for minibus drivers in South Africa, the effect of digital payment interoperability on competition in Africa, and CPRI-sponsored research on fraud identification (see webinar below).

New: IPA Study in India Asks if Self-Perception Affects Consumers’ Willingness to Seek Redress

Do internal factors like perceived agency drive differences in consumers’ willingness to seek redress? And could external factors like social norms also affect redressal behavior? In a 2022 study, researchers Sharon Barnhardt and Aayush Agarwal conducted a survey in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India to examine these questions. Here are five things they found:

1. There’s no significant correlation between the three psychological traits (locus of control, self-efficacy, and fatalism) and an individual’s likelihood of seeking redressal on their own.
2. Out of these three traits, men and women only differed regarding the locus of control.
3. Women have less knowledge of how to resolve digital financial service (DFS) complaints, but that didn’t impact their trust in DFS.
4. Women and men feel the same about reporting DFS issues.
5. Household and community norms of retribution for making mistakes influence women’s likelihood of seeking redressal on their own.

As usual, there are still more answers we need to uncover. The next question researchers need to answer is whether agency and confidence prevent women from even using digital financial services in the first place. Read more on the other studies funded by this initiative here.

New: IPA Study in Uganda Uses Consumer Complaint Data for Targeted Consumer Protection

What if you could use information about past customer complaints to predict who was more susceptible to fraud—and even when they would be targeted? That’s exactly what IPA did in Uganda with the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC). Researchers Matthew Bird, Rafe Mazer, and Kyla Longman worked with the UCC to implement a standardized complaints categorization template to track and categorize all consumer complaints received by mobile network operators.

But how can you maximize the strength of complaint data for consumer protection? Here’s what the researchers, recommend:

1. Use complaint data to predict fraud timing and targets.
2. Complaints logs don’t tell the whole story about customer complaints. Looking at all of the data is key.
3. Standardize and expand complaints templates.

If we harness the powerful insight these data can provide, we can improve redress channels, better predict fraud targets, and expand financial access. Read more on other CPRI-funded studies here.

New: New Approaches to Protecting Consumers in Digital Financial Services - Lightning Talk with Paul Adams

On April 26, Paul Adams recently presented a lightning talk on New Approaches to Protecting Consumers in Digital Financial Services at the Global Digital Development Forum. Paul shared key insights from the first three years of the CPRI, highlighting new consumer protection measures regulators can use, such as analyzing transaction level data and complaints data, conducting mystery shopping, and using machine learning.

New: Can You Spot a Scam? Consumer Protection and Scam Identification in Kenya

On March 23, IPA hosted a webinar to discuss whether or not people can actually identify scams. And if not, can we use fraud prevention tools to teach people how to identify scams? Researchers Lisa Spantig, Elif Kubilay, and Lucy Kaaria presented their recent findings from a research project in Kenya, in which they study phone scams, develop a novel measure of consumers’ ability to spot them, and measure the effectiveness of scam education. The researchers were joined by Boniface Kamiti (Competition Authority of Kenya) and William Blackmon (IPA) to discuss consumer protection in digital financial services in Kenya and how these recent findings can impact local consumers.

New: Funding Opportunities

IPA & Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab's Displaced Livelihoods Initiative | Optional expressions of interest due by June 2; Proposals due by July 21:
Supports rigorous impact evaluations, pilots, exploratory studies, infrastructure and public goods projects, and scaling work to inform policies and programs on sustainable livelihoods for displaced populations and host communities. Funding for DLI comes from the IKEA Foundation.

Next: Paul Adams at the RegTech Africa Conference

Paul Adams will be speaking at the RegTech Africa Conference on the topic of Competition and Consumer Protection. Paul will be speaking alongside Dr. Mark Yama Tampuri Jnr, President, Ghana Fintech Academic Network; Jenny Radziwolek, CEO, Regxelerator; Mary Gichuki, Advocacy Manager, GSMA Mobile Money Programme; Sheila Senfuma, Head of Programme, Digital Finance, Consumers International. The session is part of the virtual program at the hybrid conference and takes place on May 24 from 12:20-13:25 (GMT+1).
 

What We've Been Reading

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Report: GSMA Mobile Money State of the Industry Report 2023 | Mobile money has played such an important role in expanding the reach of digital financial services. Read the latest report from GSMA on the state of the industry.

Article: Also on Mobile Money, the second edition of the VoxDevLit on Mobile Money was released earlier this quarter, as was the second edition of the Microfinance version. Essential source material for academic research on these topics.

Blog: The Hidden Traps of Deceptive Design: Embedding Consumer Protection into DFS. The Centre for Financial Inclusion is launching a workstream on ‘Consumer Protection by Design’ to identify and address newer risks that emerge as inclusive finance is digitalized. This is the first blog from that new area of work.

Report: Beyond Reach: Developing a Holistic Measurement of Cash-in/Cash-out Networks | Economist Impact develops and pilots measures to assess the reach, access, and quality of cash-in/cash-out networks in five countries. We’re proud to see some of our regular Principal Investigators and advisors among those consulted on the project.

Long Read: Women, Risks, And Consumer Protection In Online Lending Platforms In Indonesia | This report from MicroSave Consulting (MSC) and the Faculty of Social and Political Science, Department of Criminology of the University of Indonesia highlights the main consumer protection risks of online lending for women and its impact on gender-based violence against women.

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