Publication: Dvara Research

This is the second in a series of blogs which describe our efforts towards building an effective in-app GRM for India’s consumers

This is the first in a series of blogs which describe our efforts towards building an effective in-app GRM for India’s UPI users

 Our response covers two themes:
Leading from a customer protection perspective, our comments emphasise the need for the prospective SRO to have duties towards the customers, at par with responsibilities towards the regulator.

The objective of this deck is to summarise learnings from fieldwork conducted in Rajasthan and Gujarat towards (i) building evidence on the customer protection issues in the sale and servicing of the two insurance schemes and (ii) bringing to the forefront the structural issues on the supply-side that are holding back Financial Service Providers (FSPs) from offering high-quality service in the context of these two schemes

In this study, we focus on whether consumers use the grievance mechanisms provided in UPI apps in smartphones, and whether those mechanisms make for an easily navigable grievance redress journey ending in satisfactory resolution.

In this paper, we take a look back at 30 months of action research work and reflect on the process, the hurdles overcome, and the lessons learned. Unlike our usual publications, this one is a meta-reflection on the method of action research. We hope it will be useful for other organizations like ours that are doing this kind of work and to funders who fund it.

How can finance be designed and structured for agriculture, farmers, agricultural households, agrarian communities and the larger economy so as to ensure economic equity, social well-being, and environmental sustainability?

This paper aims to document the unique characteristics of the financial lives of low-income households in India. It focuses on the intra-year fluctuations in income that are faced by these households owing to the precarity of their occupations.

The paper starts by revisiting existing literature on the financial lives of LIHs that shows that they manage their finances in a rather sophisticated manner. This can be traced to the radical uncertainty they face, which includes a “triple whammy” of income problems and expenditure shocks that are frequent and unique to their circumstances.

How can we provide meaningful financial protection to people who are currently not served by health insurance markets (public or private)? This is the issue Bindu and her team at Dvara Health Finance have been working on for the past couple of years.