Informal lending and savings institutions often include regular door-to-door deposit collection of cash, and some banks have adopted similar services in order to expand access to banking services in areas that lack physical branches. Deposit collection services may help clients increase their savings levels and benefit the banks by identifying potential loan clients; however, clients with larger savings amounts obviously have less need for borrowing. This study aims to better understand how deposit collection service affects the saving and borrowing behaviors of the clients.

We partner with the Green Bank of Caraga to conduct an evaluation of an “add-on” deposit collection service to their normal savings accounts and the SEED (Save, Earn, Enjoy, Deposit) commitment savings product, which imposes withdrawal restrictions (both accounts pay 4% per annum interest). In the deposit-collection experiment, Green Bank offers door-to-door deposit collection service in five villages around Butuan City in northern Mindanao.

Green Bank first identifies ten villages that are good candidates for the deposit-collection service based on accessibility and number of clients. The ten villages are then grouped into five pairs, so that the two villages in each pairing are similar in terms of depth of their outreach, density of population, distance to their branch and number of SEED clients. We then randomly choose one of the two villages from each of these pairings and Green Bank offers deposit-collection services to all existing clients in the five randomly chosen villages. We use Green Bank’s administrative data to assess the impact of deposit collection services on saving and borrowing outcomes.