By Will High, VP of Data Science
At Tala, we’ve always believed that financial agency starts with radical trust in people’s potential, especially when they’ve been consistently overlooked by the legacy financial system we’ve inherited.
For more than a decade, we’ve worked to turn that belief into action: building a global financial infrastructure company that unlocks financial access for millions of people around the world so they can thrive. Today, we’re proud to share new independent research that affirms just how powerful access can be.
Real-World Impact
The peer-reviewed study conducted by researchers at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Northwestern University, and the University of British Columbia, is the first to show that mobile phone data can be used to objectively measure financial health.
Published in the Accounting Review – a leading academic journal in the fields of economics, finance, and accounting – the research also shows that our digital-lending has made a significant positive impact on the financial well-being of our customers in Kenya across various measures.
Using fully de-identified and anonymized datasets, researchers conducted a causal inference analysis of mobile-phone-based indicators of financial wellbeing, such as monetary transactions and balances, mobility, and self-reported income and employment.
Among the core findings:
- The power of data: Mobile phone data can objectively assess financial well-being, especially for those without formal financial records.
- Digital lending drives measurable financial improvements: Access to digital credit led to improvements in borrowers’ financial well-being across all measures they explored.
- Income and employment: Self-reported monthly income increased by 20.8% and the likelihood of being employed or self-employed rose by 23.5%.
- Financial transactions and balances: Borrowers’ average transaction amounts increased by 14.9% and they showed improvements in their mobile banking balances.
- Mobility: Access to digital credit resulted in greater mobility, with borrowers traveling to 9.4% more cities.
The findings offer robust, data-driven validation of what our customers have told us anecdotally for years: when you meet people where they are, you unlock real lasting impact. To date, more than 10 million customers have been able to handle financial shocks, manage household expenses, and leverage our credit to start and scale businesses worldwide.
Our founder & CEO Shivani Siroya has pointed out that everyone likes to say they’re driving financial inclusion, but it’s rarely measured at scale. And this research doesn’t just highlight Tala’s potential – it quantifies it and provides independent, empirical evidence that proves our approach is delivering meaningful change and fulfilling the promise of financial technology.
What’s Next for Tala
Tala’s mission is to unleash economic power of the global majority, and that includes improving people’s financial wellbeing. While Shivani never set out to build a credit lending company, it quickly became clear that credit was the most effective way to test her thesis on the power of data as the foundation of the infrastructure needed to improve the financial lives of the global majority.
Today, we’re expanding our platform with AI and blockchain to create new value for our customers beyond credit, and we’re excited to deepen our presence in new and existing markets across Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia.
With this research, we’re more confident than ever in Tala’s positioning to be the leading financial platform enabling financial agency across the globe.
Learn More
Follow the link here to explore the full research report, and be sure to check out our most recent impact report to learn how we measure the financial-wellbeing of our customers year-round.
Congratulations to coauthors AJ Chen, Omri Even-Tov, Jung Koo Kang, and Regina Wittenberg-Moerman, and huge thanks to our incredible Data Science Team whose work helped make this possible.
