Bank accounts can provide a secure way for low-income households to build their assets to make
large investments or protect themselves against unforeseen expenses. Yet many poor households
don’t use formal financial services. In the Dominican Republic, Banco Unión delivers remittances to
approximately 400,000 clients who do not have a formal bank account. The bank also created two savings
products tailored to the needs of these clients. In partnership with the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), Banco Unión developed SMS message campaigns
to try to boost account uptake and usage among its remittance-receiving clientele. Two randomized
evaluations found that the messaging campaigns did not increase clients’ use of formal bank accounts,
and may have in fact discouraged account holders’ engagement with Banco Unión, as observed through
decreased deposit and withdrawal activity and slightly lower balances by the end of the campaigns.
There are several possible explanations for this behavior, including a desire for privacy, savings goals that
were overly ambitious, or the use of other, unmonitored deposit products.