Improving consumer outcomes: designing new tools for regulators and financial service providers

Innovations for Poverty Action’s Consumer Protection Research Initiative is a multi-year, multi-country initiative supported by the Gates Foundation that aims to measuring emerging risks consumers face when using digital financial services and work with financial sector regulators, financial service providers, and civil society to develop and rigorously test novel tools to mitigate consumer risks. This session will provide an overview of this initiative including a motivation for work in this area and a discussion of the types of activities we’ve carried out, including both topical areas (particular focus on fraud, pricing and pricing transparency, complaints redress, and debt stress) and methods (surveys, use of administrative data and social media data, audits and mystery shopping, and randomized trials). We will also discuss the future of the initiative (spoiler alert: at least four more years of work, including funding for more studies focused on these topics).