Overview

BancaLab is a joint initiative of Banca de las Oportunidades (BdO) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) to strengthen financial inclusion in Colombia through experimentation, rigorous evidence, and innovation in policy and program design.

With IPA’s support, BdO launched BancaLab in 2024 as a national platform for testing inclusive financial solutions, learning what works, and creating scaling pathways based on evidence.

Context

Banca de las Oportunidades (BdO) is a program of the Colombian Ministry of Finance and administered by Bancóldex. Since 2006, BdO has promoted financial inclusion for low-income families, micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and entrepreneurs. Rather than directly implementing services, BdO acts as a catalyst, coordinating financial service providers—including banks, cooperatives, fintechs, microfinance institutions, and insurers—to close access gaps and promote innovation across Colombia's financial ecosystem.

BdO’s priorities include digital finance, open data, green finance, financial health and well-being, and inclusive approaches for women, migrants, older adults, and vulnerable groups. BdO has long supported innovative financial inclusion projects, but recognized an opportunity to go further. The agency saw the need to evolve from a promoter of financial inclusion into an innovation hub capable of testing new approaches, generating evidence, and strengthening decision-making across Colombia’s financial ecosystem. This vision led to the creation of BancaLab, a space within BdO where experimentation and learning become central to driving systemic change in partnership with financial providers. By working closely with banks, cooperatives, fintechs, microfinance institutions, and insurers, BancaLab ensures that evidence-based solutions are designed, tested, and scaled directly within the market actors that serve excluded and underserved populations.

Lab Approach

BancaLab is advancing a learning cycle that guides BdO’s approach to generating and applying evidence. The cycle includes:

• Identifying learning questions with BdO program teams
• Designing and testing interventions with financial institutions
• Generating evidence through diagnostics, field research, or behavioral methods
• Using findings to inform funding decisions, redesigns, or scaling pathways

To validate this approach, BancaLab is working on two proof-of-concept initiatives:

• Microfinance Digitalization Strategy: Co-developing a learning agenda on how digital channels can expand outreach, reduce costs, and improve client experiences in microfinance institutions.
• Embedded Green Finance Initiative: Shaping a learning agenda that connects financial inclusion and climate resilience, aligning provider incentives with environmental goals

In both initiatives, BancaLab is developing Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) tools that will not only guide these specific efforts but also inform how learning is incorporated systematically across BdO’s broader portfolio.

BancaLab is in the initial phase of design and institutionalization. It is building the structures, tools, and methods that will make evidence and learning a systematic part of BdO’s strategy and operations.This is an incremental process: testing approaches, refining methodologies, and embedding them gradually across the institution.

Lab Achievements

BancaLab is already working on concrete initiatives that show its value in practice:

• Partnering with financial providers to assess the effectiveness of supply chain financing solutions for women-led MSMEs, with support from the GitLab Foundation for learning and evidence generation activities
• Defining and measuring financial well-being among SMEs using alternative data sources, with the support of IPA’s Financial Inclusion Program (FIP)
• Developing and testing cost-effective interventions with financial providers to mitigate gender bias, emphasizing the importance of experimentation to generate actionable evidence
• Promoting microsavings solutions for vulnerable populations participating in cash transfer programs

Alongside these pilots, BancaLab is also:

• Developing learning and MEL tools for BdO’s innovation calls and co-financing schemes, ensuring projects are selected and managed with an evidence and learning lens
• Systematically integrating findings from the proof-of-concept projects into the broader learning cycle, shaping how ongoing and future BdO initiatives are prioritized and supported
• Providing technical support to BdO teams to align their work with the Lab’s learning cycle across priority areas such as rural inclusion, financial education, green finance, and innovation funding