Kenya: Opinion Leaders in Finance

 A small group of respondents (106 respondents) identified themselves as hubs of communication for information on finance, based on our 2009 survey in Kenya. Opinion leaders in finance were defined as respondents who said that people ask for their opinion or advice about financial topics very often. Table 1 describes the unique demographic profile that opinion leaders tend to fit.

Table 1
                        

The most striking characteristic is the significantly higher average level of education of opinion leaders. Even more notable than their demographic characteristics, these self-identified information elites had significantly more personal experience with financial services than did other respondents (Table 2).

Table 2
          

Given that financial professionals are not common sources of financial information, people may be filling the knowledge gap by turning to experienced local financial consumers—those who already use banking services and are practiced in such financial tasks as budgeting, saving and borrowing. Those who self-identified as opinion leaders were also somewhat more likely to report that they have the final say in their households’ financial decisions.

These financial information elites are also active news-gatherers, and get information on a weekly basis more intensively than does the rest of the population (Chart 1).

Chart 1
                   

As might be expected, since they use information sources more heavily, opinion leaders also reported having received information about specific financial topics from each source more often than did other respondents.  It is encouraging that financial information transmitted through even low-tech means such as posters and pamphlets has a fairly good chance of reaching the hubs of word-of-mouth communication about finance.

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