Use of Financial Products / Services

This indicator measures the number (or percentage) of the target individuals or companies that applied for and used one or more of the promoted financial products / services, such as loans, lease-to-own payments, insurance products, money transfers, or saving accounts.

Calculate the indicator’s value either by 1) conducting a survey among a representative sample of the target individuals or companies; or 2) by collecting the information from the providers of the promoted financial products / services (this is more likely if they are your partners and are willing and able to provide the data). Include only those individuals / companies who actually used the product / service (not those who just applied for it). If you have the opportunity to use both data collection approaches, it can give you greater confidence in the data you have. 

Disaggregate the data by the type of clients (individual, companies …), gender (if an individual), type of financial products / services, purpose of the loan / credit (if taken), and other criteria relevant to the focus of your intervention.

1) In order to ensure that you are able to access the data you need from the providers of financial products, your initial written agreement with the providers can include a condition requiring them to provide the required data.

2) It is important that this indicator is not taken as if more (loans, credit, etc.) is necessarily a good thing. While projects should ensure that they promote only responsible loaning, their monitoring & evaluation systems should complement the results of this indicator with data on:

   - what the loans / credit was used for

   - % of loans / credits repaid on time, without any additional costs

3) If you collect the data using a survey among the potential clients, consider enquiring why they did not use the product.

4) If you are interested whether people actually used the financial products for the intended purpose(s), you can re-phrase the indicator to: “number or % of [specify the target groups] who used the supported financial products for their intended purpose”. Before you decide to use such an indicator, consider whether you are able to determine objectively (and without excessive effort) whether the products were used for the intended purpose or not.