Financial Diagnostic Update and Feasibility Study for the Possible Entry of a Third Party Cash Management Partner or Agent Aggregator

This report expands on the initial diagnostic of Liberia’s financial sector conducted in 2012 and the subsequent work done by UNCDF during the Ebola crisis, under the Payment Programme for Ebola Response Workers (PPERW), to ensure that response workers receive payments in a timely manner. The report presents an assessment Liberia’s financial sector, providing a review of the relevant policies and regulations, examination the sector’s structure and players, and evaluation of the robustness of liquidity management and payment systems in the country.

A critical challenge confronting the sector is managing liquidity and moving cash outside the capital, Monrovia. To that end and with a focus on tailored approaches for serving the agriculture sector and lower-income segments, the report studies the country’s nascent mobile money sector and assesses the industry’s ability to help overcome Liberia’s infrastructural gaps enable the delivery of financial services across the country economically, securely and transparently. Furthermore, the report maps the different high-volume payment streams to provide an assessment of their potential for digitization and support the feasibility study for the possible introduction of payment aggregator or a 3rd party agent network/cash management partner in Liberia.