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Does a Motivational Workshop Enhance the Opening of Saving Accounts Among the Unbanked Village Defense Party (VDP) Members? Evidence From Randomized Controlled Trial
Morshed, M.M.; Maharjan, K.L. Impact of Motivational Workshop on Financial Inclusion of Rural People in Bangladesh: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trial. Int. J. Financial Stud.2023, 11, 151.
Morshed, M.M.; Maharjan, K.L. Impact of Motivational Workshop on Financial Inclusion of Rural People in Bangladesh: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trial. Int. J. Financial Stud. 2023, 11, 151.
Morshed, M.M.; Maharjan, K.L. Impact of Motivational Workshop on Financial Inclusion of Rural People in Bangladesh: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trial. Int. J. Financial Stud.2023, 11, 151.
Morshed, M.M.; Maharjan, K.L. Impact of Motivational Workshop on Financial Inclusion of Rural People in Bangladesh: Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trial. Int. J. Financial Stud. 2023, 11, 151.
Abstract
Despite the expansion of financial institutions and proliferation of mobile financial services, reaching the unbanked and bringing them under formal financial services has become a policy concern in many developing countries. Due to the lack of financial accounts, unbanked people prefer informal, risky, and inconvenient mechanisms for receiving, sending and transferring money. Previous studies rely much on common intervention like no account maintenance and opening fees, easy documentation processes and money subsidies for opening financial accounts. This study aims to examine the impact of the motivational workshop on opening savings accounts through causality among the unbanked people in a setting where the respondents are unbanked despite having all the requirements and many institutional offers for opening savings accounts. We encouraged the unbanked people through a one-hour-long motivational workshop to open saving account. Based on our cross-sectional data and randomized controlled trial experiment among 505 unbanked Village Defense Party (VDP) members at Dhubil Union under Sirajganj in Bangladesh, we have the evidence that motivational workshop positively impacts opening ac-counts by 32.33 percent. However, the account opening rate differs in terms of respondent’s pref-erence for financial institutions. Our study also finds that unbanked people have the highest pref-erence for mobile financial services for opening accounts resulting in 15.33 percent. The result of the study has some policy implications for adopting effective strategies of financial access in many developing countries.
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
