Advisory services for digital pioneers in emerging markets
Ulana Insights
Services
The less money a person has the more time they must spend managing it. Well-designed financial services not only help people save when they can and borrow what they need, but also pay school fees, put food on the table, and deal with medical emergencies. Financial services can significantly improve the quality of one’s life, and technological innovation is bringing their benefits to more rural and low-income people around the world.
The work at Ulana Insights is to support the development and distribution of useful financial services to people across the developing world. This includes strategy and policy work with governments, donor organizations, financial institutions, technology companies and consulting firms.
However, Ulana Insights also recognizes that innovation sprouts from small companies with big ideas and is engaged in a significant amount of advisory work for fintech start-ups. As these digital finance systems have become relevant to adjacent sectors, the focus of the work has expanded to cover agricultural fintech, PAYG solar, digital humanitarian cash transfers, and adaptive learning platforms.
Advisory Services
The majority of the work at Ulana Insights is advising clients on policy and strategic operations. The policy work is generally done with regulators who would like to create enabling ecosystems for innovation or national financial inclusion strategies. Work with technology companies, banks, and telecoms focuses on developing new value propositions and building the appropriate channels for their delivery.
Publications
Clients include donors and consulting firms commissioning technical publications to advance industry knowledge and build positions of thought leadership, as well as private sector firms needing market research and competitive analyses to inform their strategies. Ulana Insights manages both quantitative and qualitative research to provide either bespoke business intelligence or landmark publications.
Training
The interactions of public sector policies and private sector strategies in converging industries advancing at the pace of technology means there is always a lot to learn. Trainings are generally for groups of 10-20 professionals and range from introductory sessions in digital finance, to more advanced topics in financial innovation, distribution in developing countries, digital product development, and start-up strategies.
Select
Client List
A modern approach to international development
International
Field Work
Customized Solutions from
a World of Experience
Ulana
Supporting the development and distribution of useful financial services to people across the developing world
Past
Projects
Humanitarian Mobile Money Trainings
This project designed two trainings on mobile money cash and voucher assistance (CVA) for humanitarian crises. They highlight key points from past research and guides both mobile money operators and humanitarian agencies to understand the opportunity for mobile money to improve CVA and the need for stronger strategic partnerships to scale its use.
Training
Digital Platforms for Small Pacific Businesses
Medium small and micro enterprises (MSMEs) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Fiji employ 80% and 60% of the work forces respectively. Digital platforms like Facebook and Alibaba are disrupting how MSMEs can be launched and managed, and this research investigated the opportunities and challenges for scaling these platforms in the Pacific.
Advisory Services
Indonesia Fintech & Finclusion Intelligence
Indonesia has the 4th largest unbanked population and one of the most dynamic emerging fintech ecosystems in the world. I authored market intelligence report on how donors and policymakers can support fintech solutions to meaningfully contribute to financial inclusion in Indonesia.
Advisory Services
Acumen Social Innovation Challenge Curriculum
One of the focal issues of the social innovation challenge is financial inclusion. I provided insights to their training curriculum on the major challenges the sector is facing and how social entrepreneurs can design solutions to them across the developing world. These include fintech solutions, digital/financial education efforts and products that offer more value than a bank account to low-income customers.
Advisory Services
PAYG Solar for Refugees in Uganda
Mercy Corps wanted to better understand the opportunity for using Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) technologies to finance solar lighting systems for households in Ugandan refugee settlements. I also traveled to the West Nile region and conducted interviews, observations, and focus groups in Arua, Rhino Camp and Bidi Bidi Settlement.
Advisory Services
Mobile Money CVA Operations Handbook
The core message of the research is that most humanitarian cash and voucher assistance (CVA) programs desire a payments system with greater geographic reach, higher-levels of customer service, and more advanced technology (like biometrics) than what is available, and partnerships with mobile money providers are needed to build more customized offerings.
Advisory ServicesPublications
Kiva Future of Finance Training
I prepared an hour long training session for Kiva interns on the future of financial inclusion, called Modern Microfinance, Mobile money and Fintech. The focus of the session was on how technology has lowered the cost of reaching customers through mobile money and agent banking systems, but has not yet led to very deep usage of digital finance systems.
Training
Mobile Money Guidance for Humanitarians
The publication helps humanitarian practitioners understand the infrastructure needed for mobile money, the regulations which govern it, and the competitive advantages it has for delivering humanitarian cash and voucher assistance (CVA). However, it also points out that mobile money systems are not used by the vulnerable populations CVA targets, and rarely extend to rural areas like refugee settlements.
Publications