World Bank's Center of Excellence on Cooperative Financial Institutions (CoE-CFI)

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Knowledge and Competency in enabling digital transformation

[Question from Raesibe M.] 

How can we accelerate knowledge and competency to enable digital transformation as a development agency and what would be possible measures of success in the digital transformation efforts?

  • From the study we contracted, the consultants came up with the following recommendations as to accelerate digital transformation among cooperatives:

    ·Increasing interaction with other cooperatives, financial service providers, and digital service providers—which may require a critical self-evaluation process to identify how to overcome resistance and promote openness to such interaction;

    ·Communicating more clearly and widely about their digitalization efforts and their social benefits, strategically targeting key stakeholders: members, regulators, research centers and universities, etc.  to help redefine the CFI’s image beyond portraying their activity and mission as focused on “finances for the poor”;

    ·Gathering statistically sound evidence about the results and social impact of their digitalization, which may entail partnering with academic institutions, and also potentially presenting findings in terms of meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals;

    ·Enhancing cooperation with other CFIs through activities such as developing networks for sharing lessons and information, “adopting” a sister-CFI relationship that could include internships and expert exchanges, and setting up working groups to partner on finding effective approaches to efforts like identifying cost savings, and building members’ digital literacy; and

    ·Assessing the social impacts of digitalization on their members and communities, and engage these stakeholders as strategic partners in the process of change, including them in assimilating and adapting to this new environment of financial services.

    Measures of success: Client satisfaction surveys, numbers of digital transactions as a percentage of overall transactions, efficiency ratios, time to process client requests

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