Mission

The Centre for Innovative Financial Design is an independent, nonprofit institution that creates new solutions in financial services for low-income households. It combines behavioral economics and poverty research with expertise in financial product development in order to design and test behaviorally-informed financial products that can be successfully scaled up. On the research side, the Centre generates new and sound knowledge about the psychologies and other drivers of how the poor manage their money. On the action side, the Centre applies these financial design principles to design and then field test novel financial products that have the promise of high impact. In addition to its research and development efforts, CIFD pursues active diffusion of its findings and successful product ideas among financial practitioners and policy makers to spur further product innovation and create public awareness about the financing needs of the poor.