Evaluating the impact of Financial Education through Umurenge Savings and Credit Cooperatives (Umurenge SACCOs) in Rwanda: Randomized Field Experiment

2016-08-16

2016-12-06

Selected key outcomes of interest are:

- Use of budget / savings plan (from survey data)
- Know responsibilities of SACCO membership (from survey data)
- Prevalence and rate of formal savings (from survey & SACCO reporting data)
- Account dormancy rate (from SACCO reporting data)
- NPL rate (from SACCO reporting data)

Researchers will evaluate impact of the training received after three months and nine months, via face-to-face surveys with SACCO members, as well as data from the SACCOs themselves. Researchers have randomly assigned 200 SACCOs (4,000 individual clients), to different groups. About 130 SACCOs will participate in the first phase of the intervention and 70 more SACCOs will that will receive the training in later phases will serve as comparison SACCOs in the first phase.
The first phase of the impact evaluation will assess the effectiveness of the program in improving the financial capabilities of SACCO members. The results will inform the design and implementation of later phases.

Researchers will evaluate impact of the training received after three months and nine months, via face-to-face surveys with SACCO members, as well as data from the SACCOs themselves.
Researchers will randomly assign 200 SACCOs (4,000 individual clients), to three groups:
• Group 1: SACCO clients will receive the full financial education program. The course will be taught by three members from each SACCO, who will be selected by SACCO staff and trained to teach the program. 65 SACCOs
• Group 2: SACCO clients will receive the full financial education program. The course will be taught by a manager and loan officer from each SACCO, and a community member, who will all be trained to teach the program. 65 SACCOs
• Group 3: These SACCOs will serve as a comparison group, and will only receive training after the study is complete. 70 SACCOs

The first phase of the impact evaluation will assess the effectiveness of the program in improving the financial capabilities of SACCO members. The results will inform the design and implementation of later phases.

Randomization using stata do-file.

The unit of randomization is an Umurenge Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCO).

Yes

200 SACCOs.

4000 individual clients of SACCO.

65 treatment 1, 65 treatment 2, 70 control

Accounting for sample design and clustering, the minimum detectable effect size (in standard deviations) for main outcomes is 0.70. • Number of randomized groups (J): 200 • Proportion treated: 0.67 • Number of individuals per randomized group (n): 20 • Intra-cluster correlation: 0.13