LISTA — Tablet-Based Financial Education for Cash-Transfer Recipients

LISTA is a tablet-based financial-education app developed by social enterprise Fundación Capital for recipients of Colombia's Más Familias en Acción conditional cash-transfer programme, using audio, video and games on shared tablets distributed through community leaders to teach budgeting, saving and use of formal financial products. Colombia's Prosperidad Social incorporated LISTA into national social policy in 2015, targeting 100,000 recipients across 30 municipalities.

The cluster-RCT (fieldwork 2015-2016) found statistically significant, multi-year gains in financial knowledge, savings practices and self-reported financial health, larger among poorer, less-educated and more rural participants, and programme women were 26% less likely to take out formal loans - but knowledge and informal-savings gains did not translate into durable increases in formal financial-system participation, and an SMS-reminder arm produced no lasting behavioural change. Variants have reached roughly 520,000 people in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Mexico.