Educated Elites are generally higher-income, rural, married men. The best educated segment in Kenya overall, they have jobs or are self-employed, and make decisions for their household. They are frequent users of technology for both social and financial purposes. Every Educated Elite has a mobile money account, and they use these accounts heavily, as very frequent savers. This gives them confidence in their ability to deal with both expected and emergency expenses. They trust banks more than people, but shy away from borrowing from formal financial institutions — likely for fear of losing their collateral.
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
INCOME
self-employed
40%
N/A
formally employed
37%
N/A
EDUCATION
secondary
70%
44%
tertiary education
15%
6%
PHONE
own smartphone
17%
19%
feature phone
45%
52%
LAND
personally own land
47%
41%
commonly own
29%
45%
GENDER (MALE)
70%
47%
AGE (25-34)
46%
31%
GEOGRAPHY (RURAL)
65%
77%
SOCIOECONOMIC
70%
SES 4-5
FORMAL ACCOUNT
OWNERSHIP
80%
38%
INFORMAL
FINANCIAL USAGE
38%
42%
MOBILE WALLET
OWNERSHIP
100%
88%
TECH USE
(HIGHEST FREQUENCY)
90%
58%
WHO ARE THEY?
Demographics
“In my heart, I want to help someone. But I won't help
someone if they're not genuine, If they're drunk or if they cannot pay debt. You cannot help someone if they're not hard working.”
NYONGESA
SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (SES)
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Demographics
Educated Elites are mostly higher-income, rural, married men with jobs or self-employed. They likely make the financial decisions for their household on share those decision rights with a few others. Educated Elites are relatively young, but not the youngest segment in Kenya. As their name suggests, they are also the wealthiest and are highly likely to have at least secondary education, and most likely to have ar tertiary education as well.
Social Network
Educated Elites talk to a wide selection of people on the phone, but they rely on themselves to cope with emergencies — drawing on their strong savings behavior. They have a limited number of people to draw on while sick, but likely look to their social network for things other than social support.
RESILIENCE: SOURCES OF MONEY IN AN EMERGENCY
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
WHAT DO THEY WANT?
Aspirations
Educated Elites look to a good future, and invest and save in pursuit of that. They look to invest in themselves: they would put the largest share of a windfall towards investment, likely not feeling the need to have so much of the money to hand and so looking to use it for that better future. They would save the next largest proportion, and slightly more than average, in a bank. They see less need to share with friends and family — perhaps this being already part of their everyday behavior. They would keep only a small proportion as cash, meanwhile — reflecting, again, a feeling of relative comfort from their income and planning behavior.
HOW DO THEY MANAGE MONEY?
Financial Behavior
“Money is valuable only if it helps you,
if it does something that I can see tomorrow.”
NYONGESA
Financial Behavior Overview
Educated Elites exhibit strong financial behavior across different aspects of financial health. They score above average on every measure, and are particularly confident in their approach to planning and their ability to pay future expenses. Every Educated Elite owns a mobile wallet. They are enthusiastic users, frequently sending, receiving, and saving money through this channel. In addition, four out of five have an account with a formal finance institution and many save there frequently. Nearly two-fifths hold an informal account. Across all channels, they save much more frequently than they borrow.
BEHAVIORAL INDEX
FINANCIAL ACCESS
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Financial Access
Every Educated Elite owns a mobile wallet, and they are enthusiastic users of them – sending and receiving money often, and saving frequently. They are also very likely to own an account with a formal finance institution, with four in five doing so, and saving there frequently as well. They rely less on informal accounts, but still nearly four in ten use them. Across channels, they save much more frequently than they borrow.
Financial Priorities
Educated Elites are confident about a good future, and invest and save in pursuit of their goals. As providers for their family and perhaps their community, they see less need to direct a windfall towards supporting them, and with their savings and income have less need to reserve a windfall for future expenses.
HOW WINDFALL IS PRIORITIZED
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
MAKES A PLAN AND FOLLOWS THROUGH
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Financial Plans
Educated Elites are notably strong planners, even among Kenyans who see themselves as strong planners overall. This extends to their expense planning, supporting their central decision-making position in the household.
Shaping Income and Expenses
Educated Elites generally have stable incomes, which combined with their strong planning and expense management, makes them confident in their ability to cover both everyday expenses as well as emergencies. Their income comes primarily from non-farming activities which insulates them from the volatility other Kenyans frequently face.
INCOME VOLATILITY
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
SAVINGS CHANNELS
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Building Reserves
Educated Elites are frequent savers, generally saving at least monthly, with most using multiple channels as part of their financial management. They are notably active users of formal financial institutions, but mobile money is their primary savings channel, as with most Kenyans. They save somewhat frequently at home, with informal saving their least used channel.
Cultivating Receivables
Educated Elites cultivate receivables adeptly through financial tools, using a wider variety of credit channels than the national average, to borrow somewhat frequently – mostly monthly or quarterly. They use both mobile money and family as their key borrowing channels, though borrow more frequently when they use mobile money. Their use of formal financial channels for borrowing is relatively low, especially compared to their heavier use of saving, suggesting these institutions do not have credit products that meet their needs and preferences. This is likely driven by the collateral requirements for such products.
SOURCES OF BORROWING
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
PHONE USAGE
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Technology Usage
Educated Elites are heavy users of technology, with high smartphone ownership and usage rates — both voice and data. They are the most frequent users of social media as well.
HOW DO THEY THINK?
Psychology
"First priority is to pay when you borrow from someone else,
to win their trust. You don’t want to be in a situation where
nobody's willing to lend to you. Trust is everything."
NYONGESA
Self-perception
Educated Elites believe in their own control over their success. Higher earners than most Kenyans, they are both very satisfied with their progress in the past five years and look ahead with confidence to the future. They have low self-esteem overall but still the highest among Kenyans, while being quite split on their level of self-efficacy.
LOCUS OF CONTROL
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
IMPULSIVE SPENDING
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Conscientiousness and Openness
Educated Elites are conscientious and comparatively open for Kenyans, while their level of impulsive spending is low overall – as may be expected from their strong planning-orientation and deliberate approach to decision-making. Their relative wealth may give them the opportunity to plan more effectively, leading to a strong approach to saving in particular.
Attitude Towards Savings
Educated Elites’ psychometrics help to explain their strong savings behavior. They are more deliberate than most Kenyans. They see saving as important in its own right and believe they have both the money to save, and that ability to keep their savings safe.
SAVINGS DELIBERATENESS
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
COMFORT WITH DEBT
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Attitude Towards Debt
While Educated Elites are quite frequent borrowers, they have low overall comfort with debt – perhaps feeling they have more to lose, given their relative wealth. Their low dependability is nevertheless higher than Kenyans as a whole, also suggesting a reticence to enter an agreement that they may not be able to fulfil.
Trust in People
Educated Elites are not particularly trusting in people but are more trusting than Kenyans on average. This is reflected in their limited trust in people overall, their likelihood not to trust strangers, and their mixed level of trust in lending to their community, which likely reduces their willingness to engage with informal borrowing channels. They are however slightly more likely to believe their community will invest in their future, than not. Their view of the equality of their community is somewhat mixed.
BELIEF IN COMMUNITY'S WILLINGNESS TO SUPPORT
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
TRUST IN BANKS
Confident Optimists
Nigeria Average
Trust in Banks
Educated Elites trust banks, which is reflected in their higher level of account ownership and frequent savings behavior with formal financial institutions – though this does not overcome their nervousness around borrowing from institutions that may demand collateral. Their belief in respect for authority is also relatively high, again indicating their orientation to trust institutions rather than community members.
USER PROFILE
Ayomi
“[To start a business] you need money and to think
very hard and plan what you will do. I’ve thought about starting a pedicure specialist place, one that doesn’t do manicures or anything else, but just pedicures.
There’s nothing like that in Lagos.”
—
Ayomi is a 21-year-old woman living with her aunt, uncle, and two cousins in a four bedroom flat in Orile, Lagos. She holds a high school degree, and works in retail at a local salon, but has big plans for the future towards which she is working and saving aggressively. She sees business as the foundation of her future financial security—“Before then [old age] I will have gotten something to lean on. That's why I say I want to learn my pedicure business and open a store.” While she earns a healthy monthly salary and she doesn't have to pay rent, Ayomi struggles to make ends meet, especially towards the end of the month. This is due in part to her support for her mom and her rigorous savings strategy.
USER INSIGHTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Savings Use Cases for Mobile Money
Robust smartphone usage may not readily translate into high rates of mobile money adoption and usage, especially where no or few obvious and ubiquitous use cases exist. Identifying the wrong use case for a target segment dilutes the services value proposition and muddies the messaging, which often fails to resonate with target customers, making it more difficult for them to know why they should use a service or what value to expect. Confident Optimists are both the heaviest users of mobile money and most frequent mobile savers, pointing to a clear use case. Moreover, they are future oriented, deliberate, and financially successful. Lacking a strong use case or clear value proposition, they are unlikely to integrate mobile money into their financial management toolkit.
Financial Account Management App
In Nigeria, high conscientiousness, self-esteem and an internal locus of control positively correlate with more frequent savings across more channels. Confident optimists score very low on conscientiousness and locus of control, perhaps because many are young, but very high on self-esteem. They are highly dependable and goal-oriented savers, and typically do so in banks on a monthly or weekly basis, albeit somewhat less frequently than the average Nigerian. Confident Optimists may find value in mobile money products that enable more effective customization and management of direct deposit, savings, and investment accounts, and enable the creation of virtual ROSCAs.