GEEP: Human Banks for the Missing Middle

GEEP is founded on the principle that  humanity is ONE interconnected bloc. None of us is truly free, until all of us are. Economic freedom comes from the  dignity  and  opportunity  to preserve a decent living. This eludes  200 million adult Africans today, over 100 million being Nigerians. Our project is a lifelong commitment to attack financial exclusion head-on, staring with IDENTITY. We developed a  process innovation, leveraging hand-held mobile technology  and over 17,000 “human banks” taking identity, finance, and financial literacy directly to the poor. We are doing this at large scale, in the poverty capital of the world. All our 7 million candidates and 2.4 million beneficiaries today are economically active (petty traders, artisans, smallholder farmers). In a 2015 McKinsey study to support us, 85% of these enterprises cited “financial services” as their biggest challenge. Traditional finance does not serve them, due to perverse incentives.

However, within this poverty is a missing middle: poor but commercially active. 

56 million of Nigeria's active poor are capable of commercial activity to better their lives. This demographic  lacks funding or formal identification  that make it easier to access traditional financial services. They are also mostly unbanked. Their “economic value” never competes with formal trades, and the cost to aggregate them is prohibitive without innovation. This creates a  perverse incentive  where traditional lenders (eg banks and microfinance) disregard the  56 million microenterprises  - leaving them in a  poverty trap . Only 0.4% of formal finance in the past 3 years have gone to this demographic which also lacks formal transaction records or a verifiable credit histories. The hardest-hit segment are  women. It is a brewing crisis. With 2.4 million lifted by GEEP so far and counting, our work has demonstrated the capacity to reverse this tide exponentially.

GEEP is essentially an identity and micro-banking system for millions of poor people, taking formalization, finance and financial literacy to poor communities, starting in Nigeria. We have built the capacity to provide biometric identify and serve over 10 million commercially-able people today with last-mile finance. We upturned traditional services (i.e. identity, physical infrastructure, bank branches), radically deconstructing it to 17,244 roving agents (“human banks”) trained and equipped with proprietary mobile technologies to do the same. We then scaled up this nationwide operation to serve millions of the commercially-able poor, 60% of whom are women. The human bank comes to you and provides you with biometric identity, savings tools, financial literacy, ease of commerce, a better life.

GEEP is a  process innovation  in response to a brewing crisis. A defining feature of the project is its scale of impact and its even bigger potential. As a process innovation, we use  big data and technology (including facial recognition) to break the barrier to  identification, analysis, and access to capital for underserved people. These microenterprises are also geotagged to their physical trading spaces. Today we have over 7 million candidates profiled and are on a mission to 25 million by 2025.

Financial participation (i.e. the ability to earn, save, track and grow a respectable living) is one of the highest ways to dignify a human. Our project is obsessed with doing this at scale, starting with CREDIBLE biometric identification. We are on an aggressive journey to elevate the forgotten poor, not by unsustainable handouts, but by end-to-end formalization and economic participation that breaks cycles of poverty for the rest of their lives.

Beyond 7 million candidates and 2.4 million beneficiaries today, we also employ and equip 17,000+ university graduates serving human banks, living and working in these communities.

Our project is a detailed process innovation, leveraging global and emerging technologies to solve local problems. It addresses the decades-long challenges of a traditional industry (microfinance) and  exponentially scale up its impact. Before GEEP, the pace of growth of poverty had drastically overwhelmed the traditional methods of finance and capital (936 microfinance bank branches, in a country of 56 million economically-active poor peoples who are mostly unidentified). Traditional ways of thinking about this problem (bulky KYC requirements, network of branches, physical infrastructure, community cooperatives) were too expensive to scale up to serve this demography. GEEP turned the problem on its head, broke down its component parts, and innovated the industry into 17,244 “human banks” with mobile devices enabling full data capture for biometric identity, savings, credit and financial literacy in the most remote and rural of communities.

Our project currently serves 7 million commercially-active poor people across all 36 states of Nigeria. These include petty traders, petty artisans, smallholder farmers. 2.4 million of these people operate direct savings accounts, have received biometric identities, direct government disbursements of microcredit or social protection, while the others are going through preparations for these. These preparations include financial literacy, opening of mobile wallets (equivalent of bank accounts for the poor), and evaluation of their trades, households or livelihoods. In addition, there are 17,244 agents (“human banks”) who are university graduates employed by our project, and planted in the rural communities to serve the 7 million people. They are also direct beneficiaries via employment, technology training and capacity building.

In one year, our goal is to scale up to 10 million people profiled, with 5 million served with credit. We would also scale up the infrastructure to provide identification and biometrics, with human banks proportionately (25,000). The video provided earlier outlines our end-to-end process and how this works.

In five years, our goal is to have reached the market of 25 million people, with 15 million served with credit, putting a 50% dent in poverty in our target population. Our target of humans banks - factoring in greater efficiency and economies of scale - would be 40,000.

Impact:

Our overarching goal is to  eradicate poverty in the commercially able population of Africa's poor . According to the World Poverty Index, this is approximately 50% of Africa's adult poor, a total of ~ 200 million people. Our big audacious goal is to bring this number down to zero. (We are not addressing  all poverty; however, we believe addressing poverty in commercially-able populations would automatically translate to reduced poverty in their infant or incapacitated dependents).

Outcomes:

The base outcomes that underpin this goal include:

at. Short-tem:  Increased individual / household identification  (which we target to see a minimum 50% increase in the rural communities we target).

b. Mid / Long-term:  Reduction in infant poverty and resultant effects (eg maternal mortality) by at least 25% in each community we target.

vs. Mid / Long-term:  Enrollment in basic education  (as children are not deployed as street hawkers to generate basic supplementary income).

d. Mid / Long-term:  Accumulation of savings

Outputs:

To achieve the outcomes outlined, we produce the following outputs:

at. Human banks , a disaggregation of traditional financial services, embodying it in trained roving agents equipped with technology tools that provide IDENTITY first, and then financial services - particularly savings and credit - and financial education to the poor.

b. Effective savings and credit products for the poor,  taking into account their peculiarities, lifestyles, income patterns and domsetic pressures.

vs. Financial literacy curriculum , delivered directly and consistently to each candidate profiled for the microcredit, as a prerequisite for eventual access to credit, and continuation even post funding.

Activities:

We are convinced, having run the following activities for the past 4 years, that they are directly responsible for our critical outputs:

at. Loan product research and design : extensive field studies, research, and quarterly revisions on our body of knowledge on the lives and methods of Africa's poor.

b. Innovation labs and technology deployment sessions , continually interrogating our technologies, systems and processes to align with our discoveries in loan product research and design.

Inputs:

at. Hard facts:  data on current state of affairs and economic regression amongst vulnerable communities, the vast majority of the population.

b. Human capital

Our solution is designed exactly for social protection, and is currently being used to deliver a social protection scheme of the Federal Government.

Our solution provides the capabilities to manage an expansive agent network as many as 200,000 agents, supports training of the agents, and equips the agents with our proprietary mobile banking technologies that function even offline and in the most remote of areas. It allows provision of unique identity (including integrations and harmonizations across national databases, and addition of facial deduplication), financial instruments (including mobile wallets and bank accounts for savings), and financial literacy for our beneficiaries to build the right financial habits and advance their lives. Each agent functions as a human bank working in a community and managing a portfolio of new entrants into the full scope financial services.

We think of our project as rails of financial inclusion. It is a fundamental infrastructure for providing and scaling financial services to vulnerable communities. Our model is primarily to enable institutions with funding and a mandate to achieve this goal at record speed. Our capacity today is able to onboard 350,000+ candidates per day for financial services.

Our solution is currently in advanced discussions for use in the execution of the World Bank CARES project - a social protection program for COVID-19 recovery across the 36 states and FCT of Nigeria.

First, our solution is designed with a principle of “build it for grandma.” If an illiterate grandma cannot use any end-user feature without seeking for help, then it is not ready to ship. We take away ALL the complexity from the end beneficiary. All they need to possess is a simple “dumb” phone, and an ability to describe their work in whatever African language of their choice. The infrastructure is fully localized, and the beneficiary is communicated with via voice call or automated voice recording sent to their phone like a phone call.

The agent network (“Human Banks”) is recruited locally and trained rigorously in engaging the potential beneficiaries on the platform; this includes beneficiaries of social protection programs. The agents have the applications which are used for data capture and beneficiary engagement; these also feed the data and interactions back to a centralize Command Center where the analytics and verifications happen. This is where the complexity resides - with data scientists, bankers and technology professionals on our team.

Yes, we do provide APIs for secure integration with other systems (especially systems of external partners or stakeholders) to allow for approved data sharing, generation of reports, monitoring and evaluation of projects being executives by our innovation and systems.

Our solution has 100% offline capability. This means that data of any candidate can be captured or updated on a local device, and this data is encrypted and stored in indelible memory of the device. Transactions and updates are able to continue on a closed local network across devices in that clusters.

The data is synced automatically the central databases upon connection any any form of connectivity, including low bandwidth - and the applications are built to disaggregate files and data into tiny packets that can be transferred on extremely low latency.

Majority of areas where we operated today are rural, with little to no connectivity.

Our project currently serves 7 million people profiled (petty traders, petty artisans, smallholder farmers) and provided with financial tools, savings, or financial literacy. 2.4 million of these people have received direct disbursement of social protection, while the others are going through preparations. These preparations include financial literacy, opening of mobile wallets (equivalent of bank accounts for the poor), and evaluation of their trades. In addition, there are 17,244 agents (“human banks”) who are university graduates employed by our project, and planted in the rural communities to serve the 7 million people. They are also direct beneficiaries via employment, technology training and capacity building.

In one year, our goal is to scale up to 10 million people profiled, with 5 million served with financial services and literacy. We would also scale up the human banks proportionately (25,000)

In five years, our goal is to have reached the market of 25 million people, with 15 million served with financial services and training, driving closers towards putting a 50% dent in financial access in our target population. Our target of humans banks - factoring in greater efficiency and economies of scale - would be 40,000.

Scale, Growth and Impact Goals

1 Year: In the next year, our goal is to scale up our operation to  10 million  people profiled and ID'ed, and in financial literacy and active savings, use of financial services, and credit. Of this, we are on track to onboard 2.6 million  new  candidates, bringing our total beneficiary universe to 5 million. We will reach more scale in the next one year than we have had in our 5-year history. Our goal is also to deliver at least 1 hour of monthly financial literacy training to each candidate.

5 Years: Over the next 5 years, it is our goal to scale up to  25 million  people captured, profiled, and in financial literacy and active savings, financial services, and. Of this, we seek to bring our total impacted microenterprises to 15 million.

Geographical Expansion

1 Year: Our strategic plan for Q3 2021 is to expand our innovation to four new African markets. We are have received inbound engagement and requests for partnerships to deploy in Ghana, Rwanda and South Africa. These requests including private sector partners, donor agencies, and governments. We also target Liberia, Benin Republic and Côte d'Ivoire.

5 Years: We plan to be active with microcredit in 10 African countires - two per sub-region - by 2025. At this point, we will focus on depth versus breath, as there will be a critical mass of countries and sub-regions represented to enable us learn detailed nuances and tailor financial products that are appliable across the continent.

Capital

Our project works in partnership with funding partners (governments, commercial providers of capital). We build the capacity that attracts capital, and we deploy and return (or revolve) this capital using our infrastructure of human banks and proprietary tools. We are constantly evolving our operation and capacity to ensure that it outpaces our current and anticipated funding. In other words,  ever prepared . We recognize that our current impact is relatively high, but our goals are even more ambitious. The primary barrier to achieving our goals, especially in 5 years, would be volume of our capital.

Technical (eg technology for hyper-localization in new countries)

We are constantly evolving our technology, staying abreast of the most efficient ways to manage, mine and analyze data for accurate credit decisions, managing our fast-growing operation of human banks, and embedding big data and machine learning to automate more of our processes. The next level of our advancement should include voice-based access in 2021, allowing our candidates to simple tasks (eg balance inquiries, loan requests) by simply talking to phone voice prompts in local languages of multiple countries. This requires Natural Language Processing, a technology we are keenly following and seeking to adopt.

Funding support from the WURI Prize will enable us to achieve significant strides in this area, amongst others. The World Bank network would also expose us to a set of global resources that even further expand our thinking and impact.

Capital

Expansion of partnerships: We are in advanced stages of an engagement with an international agency, seeking to leverage our infrastructure to scale up their reach to poor and vulnerable communities in Africa. This also has the potential to accelerate our international expansion plans as outlined.

Technical

Constant training, exposure and evolution for our team: we plan to invest significantly in upskilling our technological teams, as well as other key functions in the organization, to perform at even higher level of exposure. The World Bank network would be an incredible resource to support the team.

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

36 at the core / HQ.

17,244 on the field. 

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

1. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation : Operational Support
2. Bank of Industry, Nigeria : Fund and Regulatory Support
3. Busara Center for Behavioral Science : Microcredit product / incentive design
4. Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System : Identity Support

Our business model is the supply of financial services (savings, microcredit) and financial literacy, specifically targeting poor African populations who are historically left behind and have never been able to access funding to become active commercial participants in society. It is livelihood and economic empowerment, and restoration of dignity, with a particular focus on the “missing middle”. 

We have built a large-scale infrastructure of human banks (roving well-trained agents) and technology tools, and we deploy these human banks into poor and vulnerable communities where we provide financial inclusion, and at least 3 hours monthly of financial literacy training to commercially-able members of the communities. The vast majority of our current 7 million profiled candidates, and 2.4 million beneficiaries, have never been exposed to financial tools or funding and were stuck in poverty traps. All of them now run some enterprise on account of our project and this has translated to direct livelihood improvements and escapes from poverty.

We raise capital from institutions (international organizations, governments and private-sector capital) seeking to target these demographics for impact and commerce. We revolve or return the capital upon completion of loan and repayment cycles of each beneficiary. We are also quite obsessive about monitoring and evaluation, constantly using our human banks to capture data that enables tracking of weekly and monthly impact of the financial services on the microenterprises and their households. 

Our project today has the capacity for 10 million active beneficiares, and we are seeking to scale up across the shores of Africa.

The path to sustainability is the revolution of capital to enable more scale to several millions of people. Our funds come from providers of capital (public and private) and donor funding to support continued innovation and enhancement of our operation.

Our project is at a tipping point. We have proven the model, that it is indeed possible to attack Africa's poverty challenge at large scale and pull millions of commercially able poor into the formal financial system - a critical step on the journey out of poverty. We have onboarded 7 million in, serving 2.4 million of them with life-saving financial services, savings and credit that has transformed them from struggling poor to commercially active.

Growth

Africa's poverty challenge is still enormous. We seek  to radically accelerate our impact , targeting 25 million people over the next 5 years. It sounds incredible at first, but this was exactly how 2.4 million sounded when we were at 130,000 only 2 years ago. Our capacity for growth is exponential. We seek a global network of bold partners, people tackling the world's toughest problems, and with whom we can cross-pollinate the best of finance and innovation.

Capacity Expansion

The WURI Prize would offer us the much-needed funding to innovate further - especially with processing local languagues to enable poorer people access financial services by simple voice commands on phone. This would more effectively support our operation to multiple African countries in which partners have reached out to us. The prize would also give us the flexibility to develop new products for currently underserved groups.

Exposure

The World Bank has a remarkable capacity to give us exposure that attracts even more capital for loans, and other operational support even beyond the WURI Prize.

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

International / Multilateral Organizations (eg the World Bank, AfDB)

NGOs

Governments

Private capital (banks)

Techologists / innovators