Building agent trust among customers

• by MSC
• May 5, 2022
• 1 min

The CEO of Strategic Impact Advisors, Shelley Spencer, has a candid chat with MSC’s Group Managing Director Graham Wright on the current challenges rural CICO agents grapple with while building customer trust. They discuss the three stages of a typical agent business (start-up, operations, and revenue) in Asia and Africa and the specific support rural CICO agents need across each stage.

In the podcast, Shelley and Graham discuss specific challenges of rural CICO agents that limit customer trust—identifying and recruiting suitable agents, branding practices followed by agents, liquidity support to agents, training to agents, and suitable agent monitoring. They also discuss the importance of fraud and risk management to sustain customer trust. Graham shares a few examples of how technology can build better transparency with agents while reducing the cost for providers. They also talk about a range of models being adopted in managing agent networks and the role of the government in expanding agent networks into rural areas. The podcast concludes with a discussion on the struggles oral customers face, which limits the uptake of DFS.