Fiinafas

Lack of capability to make sound financial decisions is detrimental to both households and nations. It particularly severely affects poorer populations that lack safety nets to overcome financial shocks. Local organisations (e.g. Microfinance Institutions, local NGOs) struggle to provide tailored personal financial advice to such populations because of lack of time, resource, and training. Fiinafas, "We Can Breath" in Arabic, proposes to downscale financial capability initiatives so that local organisations can easily support vulnerable populations via a user-friendly mobile application. The user embarks on a personalised coaching journey with relevant content and nudges, while chatting to a community of peers, and to a coach either face-to-face or digitally. Coaches or 'advisors' are from local trusted organisations to better embed the solution in their existing daily tasks. The solution is first piloted in Lebanon to allow testing different languages and different users profiles, and then to other countries. Together, Fiinafas. 

Still 2 billion people worldwide have no access to any formal financial service. Out of those who access such services, 75% of people lack confidence and knowledge to use them adequately. The Lebanese population face similar challenges. In 2014, the Basic Fuleilhan Institute estimated that almost half of the Lebanese population does not plan for their spending, 58% of households fall short of money to cover their daily needs and almost half of them do not even try to save. According to CGAP, almost a third of microfinance institutions’ borrowers in 2018 spent over half of their income to service their debt and 30% are in a critical situation. Lebanon also hosts about 1.5 million refugees, mostly Syrians, that increasingly struggle to cope with their daily needs according to UNHCR. For both Lebanese populations and refugees, the situation has critically worsened since October 2019 and Covid-19. The World Bank estimates that the proportion of Lebanese falling below the poverty line fell from 33% in September 2019 to almost 50% in April 2020. Microfinance institutions, local organisations, training centers or international organisations implementing livelihoods programme lack resources and skills to tackle those increasingly pressing issues.

Fiinafas supports poorer communities and micro-entrepreneurs ('end-users') as well as local organisations to deal with the stress of managing their finances through a user-friendly engaging mobile solution that uses machine learning, audiovisual content and geo-mapping to provide personalised support. Fiinafas is a tool for end-users to strengthen their financial health, for local organisations staff (‘advisors’) to better advise the end-users and for local organisation’s management to better profile their clients. Fiinafas has five major components:

1. Assess and track financial health for poorer communities and micro-entrepreneurs
2. Coach end-users via educational content such as video (films and animated cartoons), audio (podcasts) or quizzes and one-on-one follow-ups
3. Connect end-users to peers and experts via geo-mapping
4. Train advisors through nudges and training modules or personalised coaching sessions modules that help them work with poorer communities and micro-entrepreneurs
5. Profile and score end-users based on their financial capability profile

Fiinafas provides content and educates advisors depending on the profiles of the end-users: their family situation, their work status, the language they speak, their current financial health situation (the assessment is part of the solution) and their personal way of perceiving money.

Fiinafas will serve three different targets using a human-centered design approach:

1. End-users are populations from vulnerable communities that struggle to access qualitative financial support: (a) Micro-entrepreneurs want to have a business activity to invest and build their lives. (b) Poorer communities that face economic hardships because of external factors (e.g. sudden loss of income, affected by wars or an economic crisis).

2. Advisors: staff from local organisations that already interact with end-users to support them with starting their activity or strengthen their activities (loan officers from Microfinance Institutions, MFIs, or banks, trainers from social centers or trainers from NGOs providing livelihood programmes).

3. Local organisations’ management: managers of MFIs or banks want to optimise screening of clients, improve the quality of their loan portfolio, improve risk management, and improve their profiling and scoring of clients. Managers of NGOs want to provide better quality supporting services while reaching bigger scale.

These targets are constantly associated in the development of the solution. The initial idea was run through a couple of managers, the educational content and structure of the solution is tested with end-users and advisors via interactive participatory workshops and qualitative interviews. 

Along with accessing to finance, lack of financial capability is a major constraint to small businesses to survive in challenging environments. Fiinafas focuses on vulnerable populations that struggle with financial health and lack access to qualitative financial advice. When for instance about 44% of Syrian refugee men were not working in 2017 (UNHCR), starting a small activity becomes a survival mechanism. That must be financially sustainable. Strengthening household’s finances becomes critical and spills over business finances because of how profoundly they overlap. Through technology, Fiinafas supports struggling small entrepreneurs to access experts networks and reinforces their access to social capital.

Fiinafas is a result of years of experience working in financial capability and financial inclusion in Africa and Middle East with vulnerable populations and micro-entrepreneurs. We first started by assessing the needs and challenges of end-users and advisors and testing our solution in the market: microfinance solutions, the Central Bank or other financial service providers. Our solution comes out of a simple statement: while training trainers and developing curricula on financial education, there is no tailored solution that addresses the specific needs of the market. There is no existing solution that proposes from end to end to easily and simply assess the financial capability issues of micro-entrepreneurs and vulnerable populations, track their progress over time, orientate them towards personalised educational engaging audiovisual content and connect them to experts and peers. No solution that also supports financial service providers in profiling their clients based on their financial capability. Fiinafas is aligned with international best practices in assessing financial capability while making it simple and easy to use for loan officers or trainers for which financial education training and assessment is tedious and difficult. Fiinafas is a user-friendly mobile application that uses machine learning, geo-mapping and audiovisual content and results in an innovative solution to provide high quality financial advice to vulnerable populations in Lebanon, and furthermore at a global scale. 

At the core of Fiinafas lies two elements: human interactions and technology. The latter one supports the former one. Regarding technology, Fiinafas consists of a user-friendly mobile application that is mostly based on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. After taking an initial assessment with conditional questions, end-users can have access to their results. Their results prompt them through the machine learning technology towards specific audiovisual content and connects them towards specific experts or peers that can best answer their relevant personal financial questions. From then on, end-users are geo-mapped and can see where support is available around them. The application will also analyse how they use the platform to nudge them towards certain behaviours, based on their initial profile and preferences. They will be prompted to meet physically their advisor which is, preferably, a person that they have initially met when downloading the application or registering on the website. 

Our team has experience in using a Learning Management System to provide coaching educational content (video, presentations, audio, quizzes) to Lebanese and Syrian vulnerable micro-entrepreneurs in Lebanon. This system was made available on a smartphone application and micro-entrepreneurs enjoyed engaging with the content. This project had a very high completion rate compared to usual MOOCs programme: around 60% completion rate compared to about 10% completion rate for MOOCs. Using audiovisual content and mobile applications has proven successful for these target populations.

However, the machine learning and Artificial Intelligence component has not been tested yet. We know from applications such as Elsa Speak or eLearning websites such as CrossKnowledge that orienting educational content after an initial assessment is possible and works well. 

Geo-mapping of micro-entrepreneurs and of vulnerable populations is already currently implemented in Lebanon by some international organisations such as NRC or DRC. This could be possible as well. 

Connecting users and experts through the Google Maps features has also proven to be successful with multiple other applications starting from Uber or Kareem.

Fiinafas being in its pilot phase does not currently serve people even if parts of the solution have already being tested by some people. The diagnostic component has been tested by 200 vulnerable micro-entrepreneurs. The educational content and tailored coaching component have been tested by 30 vulnerable micro-entrepreneurs.

In one year, Fiinafas is expected to serve 100 end-users through 5 advisors within 2 local organisations. The efforts in the first year will be focused on moving the solution from a prototype to an existing solution, developing and creating the necessary partnership with local partner/s and running the pilot implementation on the first 100 end-users. 

In five years, Fiinafas would have operations in three countries, reaching 20,000+ end-users supported through tailored training and coaching, 350+ qualified advisors who are using the solution with end-beneficiaries within 12+ local organizations. Out of those 20,000+ end-users, 60% are expected to improve their financial situation through tailored and high quality financial advice. 

In the next year, Fiinafas has launched its website and 100 end-users, 5 advisors and 2 local organisations (likely microfinance institutions) have tested it. This first phase will be used to co-create the solution with the 2 microfinance institutions and the end-users and gather feedback. 

In the next two years, Fiinafas has launched its mobile application.

In the next three years, Fiinafas has been launched in South Africa and partners with one Fintech company to adapt the content to this specific market. 

In the next 5 years, Fiinafas has been used by several microfinance institutions in Lebanon, by the Lebanese Microfinance Association, the Banque du Liban and at least one international NGO that provide livelihoods programmes. Fiinafas is used by at least 2 clients in South Africa and launched in a third country. By then, at least 20,000 end-users have used Fiinafas and about 350 advisors are supported through tailored training and able to use Fiinafas to support end-users. Out the of 20,000 end-users, 60% of them improve their financial situation through tailored and high quality financial advice. 

The team faces some challenges regarding selecting the right technology that can both be light (smartphone memory and data consumption) for end-users, interactive and engaging at the same time. The team also considers connectivity issues such as internet penetration and related to this, the financial aspect of data consumption for vulnerable populations to use Fiinafas. Fiinafas also preempts that vulnerable populations have to have access to smartphones and have available space on their phones.

The team also faces some challenges in choosing the most relevant legal form of the organisation, with team members being located in several countries and focusing their operations on one another country. Finally, the team also faces some financial and time challenges as they struggle to allocate their full-time to the solution when struggling to raise more funding. 

Right technology: The team is looking for pro bono staff that can support them in choosing the most relevant technology at a lower costs. The Founder is being supported by Makesense and has already participated in a workshop with the Devoteam Foundation with experts in IT and digital tools. The team is also exploring partnering with a Fintech company once the first prototype is robust, solid enough and has been proof-tested. 

Connectivity and access to internet: The team is looking at building a solution that is available off-line and where data gets synchronised when accessing wifi. The Fiinafas solution looks into the possibility of also including wifi routers at local organisations' premises for end-users to access internet at least at their premises.

Access to smartphone: This is critical for Fiinafas to be operational. A USSD-based version of Fiinafas could be explored later on.

Legal form: Being supported by Makesense, the Founder has requested for pro bono support with a lawyer to be able to choose the most relevant legal option. The team member in charge of partnerships is also looking more closely at this matter, having more legal experience from previous experiences.

Financial/ time available: The team is looking at actively applying for funding while one of the team member is considering investing more personal time and money into the venture.

Our team is composed of three team members who have a combined experience of +20 years in the fields of financial capability, financial inclusion, digital tools, start-ups and impact investing across Middle-East and Africa. 

Chloe Jacquin is our Founder and Operations Manager. She is in charge leading the team as well as the operations, technical content and HR.

Dani Ibrahim is our Partnerships Manager. He is in charge of acquiring new partners and manage clients relationship. 

Aurelia Fah is our Fundraising Manager. She is in charge of securing sustainable financing.

Application developer/website: Sub-contractor

Marketing & Branding: Sub-contractor

Audiovisual content: Sub-contractor

Our team includes a diverse and complementary group of experts in financial capability, financial inclusion, digital tools, start-ups, impact investing, and human-centered design that provides expert viewpoints from a wide array of fields. Our team combines +20 year of experience working and operating in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the Middle East and in Lebanon in particular, working for NGOs, venture-builders, investors and international organizations. The team is highly recognised by the Banque du Liban and other high-level stakeholders in the country such as the World Bank. 

More specifically, our Founder is specialised in developing financial education curricula, digital learning solutions using human-centered approaches. She has trained 300+ entrepreneurs and 100+ trainers on financial capability in Middle East and Africa. She is also involved in financial education working groups with the European Microfinance Network or United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Livelihoods in Lebanon and has worked on national strategies on financial education in Seychelles and South Africa for the poorest communities. 

Our Partnership Manager has 13+ years of relevant industry experience in coaching trainers on entrepreneurship, being himself a serial entrepreneur. He is highly regarded in Lebanon and Middle East by microfinance institutions and national stakeholders in the sector.

Our Fundraising Manager cumulates 10+ years of impact investment experience across Africa working and supporting financial institutions including microfinance institutions and fintechs in their ambitions to scale and solve their key strategical, financial and operational challenges. Over the past year, she developed a financial digital solution to provide credits to micro-entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

Fiinafas does not partner with any organisation so far. The team is actively looking at this aspect and has identified a few potential partners. This will be further looked at in the course of refining the prototype of the business model.

Our value proposition is to offer engaging and gamified monitoring tools to support vulnerable populations including micro-entrepreneurs (end-users), advisors as well as local organizations with the aim to strengthen the financial capabilities of the end-users.

Fiinafas provides a B2B solution to local organisations, which indirectly benefits the ultimate beneficiaries, namely the micro-entrepreneurs and vulnerable individuals. The solution is designed to be used, purchased and delivered through local organizations such as (i) financial services providers including microfinance institutions, commercial banks, postal banks, fintech credit providers, mobile network operators that provide mobile money and (ii) other types of entities involved in financial education and livelihood programs including NGOs and public entities. Fiinafas enables financial service providers to optimise screening of clients, improve the quality of their loan portfolio, improve risk management, and improve their profiling and scoring of clients; and NGOs and public entities to scale-up better quality supporting services.

Fiinafas is a fully-fledge program built around five different components (see solution overview) which includes courses and coaching in financial education delivered on a subscription and purchase basis through partnerships and programs with financial service providers and all types of local community-based organizations.

By assessing the current financial health of micro-entrepreneurs and vulnerable individuals, Fiinafas profiles and scores end-users based on their financial capability and delivers tailored coaching programs connecting the end-users to the relevant local experts, peers and educational content, which are provided at teachable moments and whenever there is already an interaction between the end-users and advisors.

Fiinafas is a social enterprise which intends to first develop its solutions through a mix of partners’ equity and grants. After the development stage and as the solution gets deployed, the enterprise is designed and expected to become self-sustainable and generate revenues through its subscription-based model.

During the next 12-24 months, as we start to design, develop and implement our solution, we will be relying mostly on grants and donations. Our team has more than +20 years of combined experience working with the donor and investor communities in emerging markets and expects to leverage its network to develop and launch the prototype in Lebanon.

After the first phase of development, we intend to get started and test our solutions by partnering with one microfinance institution which has already expressed interest in the solution. Our business model includes a revenue-generating stream as the solution will be embedded in the operations of the partners as it provides valuable support to the end-users of our partners as well as our partners themselves. Our subscription-based model will offer different rates dependent on the types of contents and components the partner is willing to benefit from, as well as the numbers of end-users served.

Building on this revenue-generating stream, and keeping our operational costs low (sales and marketing), Fiinafas intend to become self-sustainable within 2 years.

As we are working to build a solution that will ultimately benefit the more vulnerable populations and micro-entrepreneurs in building their financial capabilities, Fiinafas will involve working with a multitude of stakeholders including Government entities, financial service providers and national or regional support programs. The solution involves using machine learning, audiovisual content, geo-mapping technology and pedagogical approaches. Solvers with strong relevant technical expertise and existing experience working with similar targeted population segments and within comparable environments can share their knowledge and practical experience, expected risks, common challenges, areas of opportunities and most importantly, tested approaches and solutions that can be integrated. 

Legal matters can be complex and involve different jurisdictions especially with the vision to start the application in one country (Lebanon) to be followed by a second (South Africa) and expended regionally in Middle East and North Africa on one end and in Sub-Saharan Africa on the other. 

Equally important being accepted as a Solver reflects the recognition and being a member of such a vibrant and highly renowned group of talents represents a testimony that the solution has merits. The directions and mentorship that prospective board members can give and the connections they could give access to will enable the healthy growth and scale up. This will be also supported by the media exposure and marketing opportunities. 

- Solution technology: finding and selecting an optimal technical approach is a delicate matter that would have short-term and long-term impact on the cost and the capacities of the solutions. 

- Funding and revenue model: The team can really benefit from working and discussing with experts and peers that can validate certain assumptions, share knowledge and experience and give meaningful suggestions and insights. 

- Talent recruitment: We see the community of Solvers as the go-to pool of talents, this would include partners, suppliers and even links to potential future team members. 

- Legal or regulatory matters: MIT Solve's global nature would help address the complexity around jurisdictions and taxation amongst other matters, especially that the current vision for the solution is to be implemented across to large regions (MEast & North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa), 

- Other support such as finding strong board members and getting marketing and exposure  

Fiinafas is ultimately targeting to impact the lives of micro-entrepreneurs and vulnerable communities through helping them achieve their goals, which is associated in large part with expanding the capacity and capabilities of existing support networks and stakeholders, which is  dependent on creating successful partnerships with them. 

- Partnering with Microfinance institutions is key, these give access to a wider network of micro-entrepreneurs who are actively seeking means to start, sustain and grow their activities. the institutions' common goal, in expanding the capacity of their staff to advise clients while focussing on their day-to-day job, will be a driver for adapting and spreading the use of Fiinafas.

- National financial literacy programmes: be it within central banks, ministries of social affairs, ministries of education or across them all and other entities, Fiinafas can be adapted by such programmes to achieve their goals, this will provide funding for development and implementation, as well as allowing access to wider segments of the population and strengthening the trust in the solution.

- Mobile application developers / E-learning platform specialists : our experience is that existing platforms can provide easier and lower cost solutions but they often have limitations on the learning experience and especially for skill-based training solutions and coaching programmes such as Fiinafas, that can benefit from partnering with MIT: Institute for Data, Systems, and Society 

- Existing Solvers with experience in developing revenue models can provide very vital view on developing income sources and share insights on supplementary income drivers.

Fiinafas concept was inspired and guided in large parts through working with refugees communities in Lebanon in their efforts to become economically active, find new income sources and reduce dependency on aid and relief funds. The team has extensive experience on designing and implementing financial capabilities programmes as well as an in-depth understanding of the challenges faced by refugees, including challenges beyond access to finance and income generating activities that include prejudice, mistrust between communities (host and refugees) and legal restrictions. The team has been working with refugees since 2016 and developed training programmes for refugees and vulnerable host communities. Fiinafas' design considers connectivity challenges and limitation, as well as lack of income or irregular among other hardships faced by refugees. It also considers working with both communities to increase trust and reduce tension especially in economic activity context. Besides the ability to reach to existing refugee communities, the team has the ability to connect with their members and collaborate with them to design programmes that cater to their most dire needs relevant to their financial capabilities and deal with their financial distress.

The use of technology enabled solution will help reduce the costs of reaching beneficiaries and overcome the location challenges with the enablement of geo-maping (challenges of frequent change of residence, living in an planned urban and semi-urban settings and camps and even moving across borders). The beneficiaries will be reachable and will be able to get the help they look for with more time and location flexibility.

Fiinafas' primary targets ordinary citizens who are in the lower segments of income in the society. These are potential or existing micro-entrepreneurs who are economically active or seeking to be active and having to deal with challenges of low, no regular or no income. The majority are female (gender) and youth (age group) the specific percentage could vary between countries and regions. They are in need to improve the way they manage their finances and to have access to suitable and affordable source of income. Fiinafas enables them to achieve that through assessing their financial capabilities and building these up besides providing tools to help them benefit from available financial services such as credit, savings and insurance amongst others. Fiinafas' team members have been working closely with targeted segments and continue to engage with a number of on-going projects that involve working on financial literacy, entrepreneurship capacities and access to financial services. Besides that, the team engages frequently with potential beneficiaries to understand them better, monitor impact of concurrent developments on their situations and how they are coping with that. This enables the identification of evolving needs and how to create content and approaches that help them in their resilience and provide them with tools specific to their needs, especially to save to start an income generating project, plan and manage the finances of these projects. The tools that the solution provides enable the entrepreneurs to avoid failure due to mismanagement and lack of necessary skills  

Fiinafas is precisely exploiting digital learning technologies to provide financial literacy to the most vulnerable section of the population. as a digital learning solutions it goes beyond traditional learning management systems and it provides a more custom-made solution for individual users.

The approach depends on deep understanding of the individual needs of the beneficiaries and providing them with customized content, employing evidenced based approaches to equip them with necessary skills, incentivise them to adapt and apply these to enhance how they make their decisions (personal finances and/or income generating activities). The solution is inspired by working with the targeted beneficiaries for many years testing different methodologies and applications with the evolvement of new technologies and the penetration of smart phones, which enabled that at lower costs besides using data analytics that enable faster and more powerful means to assess the effectiveness of the solution which is developed with direct engagement  with the beneficiaries and using human-centered approaches. Beneficiaries identify their goals, ambitions and success factor from using Fiinafas.

The learning experience is continuously enhanced through close interaction with beneficiaries while they participate in the programmes. Fiinafas also provide financial service providers, socially driven microfinance institutions in particular with a solution to reach targeted beneficiaries and provide sound financial advisory and capability building, a common goal amongst these service providers, which is very challenging and not directly link to their core activities and the commonly available talents they recruit.