FINSCOPE SURVEY  IN TANZANIA

FinMark Trust (FMT) was established in 2002 as a UK Department for International Development (DFID) funded non-profit organization based in South Africa and operating in the South African Customs Union (SACU) region.  FMT’s mandate is to make financial markets work for the poor. More recently, its trustees have expanded this mandate to allow it to work outside SACU.  To help achieve its objective FMT has developed a demand side financial sector survey tool called FinScope.

FinScope provides detailed information about the usage of, demand for, and behaviour towards financial services by the population in a given country.  It has proved to be a powerful tool and source of information in shaping pro-poor financial policies and development.  It is being used by both policy makers, financial sector providers, researchers and others connected to the financial sector.

FinScope covers the entire population, rich and poor, urban and rural.  The aim of the survey is to establish credible benchmarks for financial access and highlight opportunities for innovation in product and delivery.  The data collected can be used to:

Importance of FinScope survey

FinScope type of survey is very important especially to African countries due to the following reasons:

• It provides comprehensive information of demand for financial services of the entire population of the country that will support efforts to build inclusive financial markets.  Users of that kind of information include governments, regulations, donors, financial sector providers, consultants and academics
• It provides household level data of financial matters that can be used to construct and disseminate headline indicators on financial access.
• It provides comparable, standards and reliable data about demand for financial services across boarders to financial services providers and regional integration initiatives
• It provides an opportunity for a private–public partnership in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals and Commission for Africa activities.  The private sector will gain commercial value while the public sector will see its tax dollars used to build inclusive financial markets and thus achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The FinScope survey has now been run in five African countries, which include Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland.  It also in process of being rolled out in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania.  Requests and expressions of interest have been received from Madagascar, Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria.  

FinScope has proved to travel well across borders, and has a potentially high impact for a relatively inexpensive cost.  However for FinScope to be an effective tool the following features need to be in place:

• Tailored approach to meet the requirements of a particular country:  The contents and approach to implementing FinScope must be tailored to address country specific context. However the general philosophy and principles should remain in place and a core set of questions should be included in any approach.

• Standard survey content and methodology:  To ensure that the provided data can be compared across countries and can be used to capture regional market trends, a standard core portion of the survey should be applied in each country.  The survey tool and methods, and sampling practice should also be standardized insofar as possible.

• Quality control on the execution and analysis:  To ensure reliability on the data collection and analysis, strict quality control measures on the following issues need to be applied:

·         Questionnaire contents and design

·         Sampling methods

·         Field work practice and data collection

·         Data capturing and coding

·         Data analysis and reporting model

·         Data/information dissemination Funding

FinScope Survey is normally funded initially by the body requesting the information. This may come from the public or private sectors, or the donor community.  In the case of Tanzania, the first, baseline survey is wholly funded by the Financial Sector Deepening Trust.

The available funds should cover FinScope unit costs (core team and sub-contractors), as well as local implementation costs

Ownership of FinScope data

Ownership of FinScope data will depend on the funding structures at the country level.  If it is donor-funded FinScope, the data will be freely available for dissemination. In case of a purely private funding programme, ownership would reside with the funders.  It might thus have limited dissemination should the private owners wish to charge for various outputs from the survey.