Traditionally, the provision of financial services to the low income population is often based on personal, one-to-one relationships, making it human resource intensive. Thus, financial institutions have to incur high costs for building and maintaining branch networks and developing trained personnel. Alternative delivery channels can reduce these costs and offer a balance between personalized services and emerging transactional services, such as mobile banking.
However, it may also show up in very strong credit growth, asset price booms and large capital inflows.