FinMark Trust, an independent trust based in South Africa, and the Centre for Financial Regulation & Inclusion (Cenfri) of South Africa, have announced a $9.6m partnership with the MasterCard Foundation to launch and support a data facility for financial service providers.

The five-year partnership is designed to help financial service providers better understand the financial services needs of their clients.

Dr. Prega Ramsamy, CEO of FinMark Trust, said: "Our partnership with the MasterCard Foundation will allow us to catalyze innovation for tailor-made solutions to meet client needs. This will undoubtedly take our work to the next level which is anchored on the quality of financial inclusion."

The data facility, named insight2impact (i2i), aims to demonstrate how financial service providers can draw customer insights from current data sets and effectively use them in product design and business decisions that offer clients services that meet their needs.

It will also help to house, develop and disseminate new approaches for measuring financial access and use.

Ann Miles, Director of Programs, Financial Inclusion & Youth Livelihoods at The MasterCard Foundation, said: "Banks and other financial service providers today, more than ever, need to be responsive to clients in order to differentiate themselves and remain relevant."

"i2i is an important, collaborative effort to help the industry improve not just the range and relevance of financial products and services, but also enhance clients' experiences and satisfaction with services being offered to them."

The initiative creates a practical resource which will help to increase capacity within financial service providers to use client-centered data.

It will also help to build and highlight the business case for financial service providers to take more deliberate client-centric approaches to business decisions, particularly in terms of serving economically disadvantaged clients.

Herman Smit, Technical Director of Cenfri and interim lead of i2i, said: "In most developing countries, limited insights on new consumer segments undermine the ability of the financial sector to best serve them.”

“We believe through this pioneering collaboration we can work with financial service providers to improve our understanding of how they can best serve these new consumer segments through the use of data."