conclude therefore that the profiles are assigned randomly and that the samples of auditors in each script is balanced.

# **5. Data**

We use data from 4 different sources. First, the questionnaire filled by auditors after each visit which covers various aspects of the visit, including its length, the products offered and their features. Second, the printed materials that the staff handed to the auditor, consisting of either brochures about the product or, less frequently, personalized amortization tables when credit was requested. The third data source comes from a survey of a sample of credit officers that serviced the auditors. The survey was conducted in Peru and Ghana after the audit study was completed and asked about basic socio-economic characteristics, financial literacy, the marketing of financial products and bonus schemes offered by their employers. The fourth and final data source is what we refer to as the market products dataset containing the terms of all the savings and credit products offered by the institutions in the study at the time of the visits. This dataset is assembled using various sources including the web, market surveys and conversations with the regulatory authorities and staff of the financial institutions. The dataset only includes credit products with loan sizes in the range requested by the auditors, and savings products that can be contracted with the initial deposit amount mentioned. The construction of this dataset proved challenging, especially in Ghana and to a lesser extent in Mexico, for two reasons. First, the authorities in charge of collecting market information only require the average of certain terms for the institutions they supervise. As a result, they did not have detailed data on all the terms for all credit and savings products of supervised institutions and they lacked all product data for unsupervised institutions. The web was therefore used to fill in missing information but since many of the terms were not available online either, they had to be requested directly from the institutions. The other problem was that financial institutions were not always willing to disclose their product portfolio.<sup>24</sup> This resulted in a product dataset with 451 saving and 281 credit products of which 365 and 240 had complete information, respectively.<sup>25</sup> Data for products with complete information are used to generate Table 1 and to assess the total costs of the products offered to the auditors.

We use data from the questionnaire, and market products dataset to construct variables related to the amount of information provided by the institutions.<sup>26</sup> We first matched the product offered to the

> 24 This was particularly true in Ghana where the collection of the market products dataset was completed 10 months after the study. For Peru and Mexico the dataset was completed three and four weeks after the study, respectively.

> 25 If a transaction account has up to 2 missing cost terms is considered to have complete information and is used in the analysis. The rest of products (investment account and credit) are considered to have complete information if they have up to one missing cost term.

> 26 For savings products, the fees include (1) opening fee; (2) management / administration fee; (3) membership fee; (4) debit card fee; (5) the interest rate offered; (6) the total annual earnings (APY); (7) inactivity penalty; (8) account inquiry cost; (9) cash withdrawal cost; (10) debit card replacement fee; (11) penalty for not maintaining a minimum balance and (12) early withdrawal fee for investment accounts. For credit products, the fees include (1) interest cost; (2) insurance (e.g. life, default);

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