EFInA hosted its eighth breakfast series event in April 2018 to disseminate key findings of its survey titled “Financial Services Agent Survey-2017”.  This survey aimed to gain a better understanding of financial services agents’ operations; the challenges they face in providing financial services; their motivation for becoming agents; and their perceptions of how to increase the uptake and usage of agent services.

Henry Chukwu, Programme Specialist, Agent Networks at EFInA shared key findings from the survey. He highlighted the comparison of services offered to customers by agents and services patronised most frequently. The key findings of the research showed that fund transfer was the service most commonly offered by the agents surveyed, which is offered by 79.3% of them. Over a third of the agents (36.5%) say that funds transfer is the product customers patronised most frequently.

From the Financial Services Agent survey 2017, network failures and other technical issues are the main challenges being faced by agents and customers.  In addition, comparing what agents are required to charge and what they actually charge reveals a disparity in agent pricing. 45% of the agents surveyed said that they set the price they charge customers and a fixed fee structure was mostly applied by agents on transactions. This highlights the need for the regulator to identify a more appropriate agent pricing model for the industry.

Mr. Emmanuel Agha, Managing Director/CEO, Innovectives Limited, shared updates from Agent Network Committee which was set up to further discuss the issues around regulation and infrastructure hindering the growth and development of agent networks in Nigeria.
View photos from this event

Presentations