A New Blueprint for Rural Access: 5 Strategies to Find and Support Effective Agents in the Last Mile
The blueprint for successful rural agents
In the previous post in this series, we shared the personal stories of star agents — mobile money agents who contributed outsized impact during our rural mobile money agent pilot in Indonesia. Their efforts helped drive viability for a partnership between GrabKios and Cargill, tapping local agents to disperse cocoa premiums within their rural communities, and delivering funds to farmers in a record of less than three days (compared to the standard six months).
The pilot showed there is a strong business case for launching and maintaining rural agent networks, particularly when star agents are involved. How can businesses apply these insights to launch their own successful rural agent networks? Here are a few strategies that may be a useful starting point for other markets:
- Recruit agents with education and merchant experience — village size and location may not matter
- Map networks strategically but expect star agents to exceed distance limits
- Offer multiple revenue streams to attract and retain the most entrepreneurial agents
- Grow value for agents and your network with new digital use cases
- Offer hybrid support to star agents with digital nudges and on-demand field support
1. Recruit agents with education and merchant experience — village size and location may not matter
Star agents share similar characteristics like education, gender, business experience, and community connections, so you should start your initial search for agents based on this profile — rather than focusing on where they are located. Star agents are motivated to move beyond geographic limits and connect with their wider networks.
We partnered with Mercy Corps Indonesia to identify agents based on an initial list of requirements, which included basic literacy and numerical skills. We also ideally wanted agents who were employed as farmers or in a related field like owning an agri-kiosk or a nursery, in order to capitalize on existing network connections. For farmers to qualify as GrabKios agents, they also needed to have a smartphone, an ID card (E-KTP), an active email address, a bank account, and — most importantly — an interest in becoming a GrabKios agent.
2. Map networks strategically but expect star agents to exceed distance limits
The twenty-four villages shortlisted in Bone and Soppeng all had populations between 1,500–3,000 people and an optimized agent-to-farmer ratio to set agents up for success — Mercy Corps Indonesia invested significant time to ensure that agents were placed within <6km of most farmers. With this mapping, disbursements could be made quickly.
However, most agents said they were willing to travel greater distances for higher incentives — indicating that it might be possible to increase the agent to farmer ratio to 1:28 up from 1:10 within the pilot.
Consider polling potential agents to gauge the ideal distance between agent and customer in your market — it may be less dense than expected, allowing you to scale a network more efficiently.
3. Offer multiple revenue streams to attract and retain the most entrepreneurial agents
Star agents are entrepreneurs at heart. Offering additional opportunities to grow revenue is a great way to attract and retain these powerful workers — star agents need more than just one opportunity to grow their business.
Not only were star agents active in disbursing premium payments to farmers in record time, but they were also strongly entrepreneurial in activating and acquiring new customers from non-Cargill networks. Through GrabKios, agents extended key digital financial services such as mobile top ups and pre- and post-paid electricity tokens to a rural audience that was hitherto unable to access these services. Additionally, star agents managed liquidity for themselves and, in some instances, for other agents too — a crucial challenge in the world of CICO.
Offering additional opportunities for agents to grow their income can help retain agents on an ongoing basis, encouraging them to invest in your network in a win-win relationship between networks and agents.
4. Grow value for agents and your network with new digital use cases
Our primary use case for the agents was to disburse premium payments to farmers in exchange for a sustainable cocoa yield, which is important for both local economies and the health of the soil. However, the pilot surfaced the need for additional use cases to make rural mobile-money agents more profitable and sustainable over a longer term.
In a promising experiment conducted during the pilot, Mercy Corps Indonesia brokered a partnership between fertilizer company Pupuk Kaltim and agri-input company Syngenta. As part of this experiment, we tested if farmers were willing to access agri-products via GrabKios agents. Using a demo plot, farmers made payments to the Grabkios agents and agents then used the GrabKios platform to digitally remit to the agri-companies.
Layering on this use case was extremely promising: 80% of the farmers in the pilot applied their premium disbursement towards daily needs or agri-inputs. By utilizing the power of the Grabkios agent network, they were able to trade for high-end farm products that they would otherwise not have been able to access.
In particular, local farmer groups were essential in achieving this collaboration between the agri-companies and farmers, indicating the power of an embedded rural agent network. At the end of the experiment, each agent’s transaction volume was 1.7 million rupiah as a direct result of fertilizer distribution.
5. Offer hybrid support to star agents with digital nudges and on-demand field support
Throughout the pilot, a variety of trainings were delivered to the agents: in person, online, and ad hoc visits from our field officers. Training helped agents assuage fears of fraud and set them up to confidently use GrabKios. Additionally, specialized business trainings on cybersecurity, bookkeeping, and promotions helped agents learn how to increase their revenue. Most importantly, the success of this online training was supplemented by ad hoc and on demand visits by the field officers, who brought a human touch to a new experience for many.
All of this added up to measurable revenue. Our data analysis showed us that online training was hugely successful in raising the GMV 3x, and 78% of the agents with timely transactions reported receiving more than 10 nudges to drive their performance.
Delivering live digital payments in 2023
What’s next for mobile money agents in rural Indonesia? Proving that rural agent networks are viable was just the first step — now, it’s important to replicate these learnings in other markets and find new ways to expand CICO services.
Insights from our 2021–22 pilots led to the creation of an additional pilot in February 2023, where we distributed live and real-time cocoa premium payments worth 61 million rupiah to over 250 farmers from 23 agents in Sulawesi. Most of the premium distribution was done digitally, with farmers having the option to take the premium in cash or digital forms.
Since so much of the premium disbursement channel has been digitized in this most recent pilot, only one field officer was hired to offer on-ground support to agents. Despite the severe floods in Indonesia — some of the worst in the past 20 years in Sulawesi — GrabKios agents have already achieved an over 90% successful disbursement rate with a few days left in the pilot. While most of the withdrawals have been in cash, access to local agents ensure that farmers have increased access to digital services, such as purchasing airtime and other products, in addition to being able to receive their premium disbursements much faster than ever before.
The success of 2021 and 2022 pilots and live premium disbursement in 2023 have instilled an increased confidence in Cargill to replicate this model to other sustainable cocoa producing areas of Indonesia. We look forward to seeing its expansion and learning more about star agents throughout the cocoa-producing market in Indonesia.
What’s next for agents
Have an idea for a similar pilot or project? Have your own insights on what makes a successful rural agent? Interested in learning more about why gender matters when it comes to money? At IDEO Last Mile Money, we’re always looking out for potential partners and collaborators to build with. Get in touch with our team to learn more.
