WEF Coalition Develops 55 New Financial Inclusion Metrics

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The World Economic Forum and 15 of its partners on Thursday launched a new financial inclusion measurement framework. It defines the metrics that are crucial to understanding and improving how hundreds of millions of people access and use financial products like digital payments, savings accounts, and loans in the developing world.

The report complements ongoing efforts to quantify how financial services are being used, and their impact on people’s lives. “More nuanced metrics provide businesses and governments with the necessary inputs to offer customer-centric strategies that increase access and usage of financial services in a sustainable manner,” said Cheryl Martin, Managing Director, Head of Industries, World Economic Forum.

The findings, summarized in Advancing Financial Inclusion Metrics: Shifting from access to economic empowerment, proposes specific metrics to analyze the maturity of payments, credit, savings services and the overall regulatory environment. Greater visibility into these inputs is vital to financially include those left out of the formal economy whether in India or Mexico, Tunisia or Zimbabwe.

The initiative’s 15 core partners include financial providers, consulting companies, foundations, and consumer goods companies who together reach the majority of the world’s population, including the estimated 2 billion who currently don’t have bank accounts, debit or credit cards, or access to loans. They are Alliance for Financial Inclusion, BBVA, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Credit Suisse, International Finance Corporation, Mastercard, Mercy Corps, MTN Group, PayPal, SWIFT, Tata Consultancy Services, Telenor Group, Unilever, UNSGSA, and the World Bank.

Paul Polman, Chief Executive Officer, Unilever said: “Data is critical to better understand the relationship between financial inclusion and greater wellbeing. By digitizing the processes of buying supplies and selling goods, small and micro businesses in emerging markets can gain access to appropriate low-interest credit, further boosting business growth.”

The report highlights that much of the required consumer data is already available. However, expanded data collection is needed in certain cases. In India, for instance, a country with 251 million people without access to financial services, only 11% of consumers used debit cards for payments over the course of a twelve month period 1.

This statistic is interesting, but fails to tell the whole story. Going several levels deeper, the application of more granular metrics would provide insights into the actual percentage of registered and unregistered businesses accepting digital payments; the barriers preventing both men and women from using digital financial services , alternative payment methods used (e.g., account direct transfer, card top-up), and the types of purchases made (e.g., groceries, utilities, healthcare, etc.). Understanding the customer at this level of detail would allow for more targeted solutions for increasing debit card acceptance.

As emphasized by H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, “I always emphasize the importance of data. Without good data, we cannot map potential demand for financial services, track progress, and develop customer-centric products and services for the excluded, including women. The knowledge data provides, in turn, will help shape effective policies and generate the strong political will needed to achieve full financial inclusion.”

One thought on “WEF Coalition Develops 55 New Financial Inclusion Metrics

  • January 24, 2018 at 1:46 am
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    Speaking of the importance of good data, “the estimated 2 billion who currently don’t have bank accounts, debit or credit cards, or access to loans” will be a 3 year old statistic in April 2018. (On April 15, 2015 World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim announced that 700 million adults worldwide became account holders between 2011 and 2014, a 20% drop in the number of unbanked according to 2014 Global Findex, reducing the remaining global unbanked total to 2B).

    Once ubiquitous global financial inclusion is achieved, it indeed will be beneficial for analysts to sustain ongoing tracking of upward progress from inclusion, upward through financial literacy and usage, then further upward through steps of financial sophistication … to continually enhance the participation of the recently financially onboarded individuals, families, communities, regions and nations so they can more fully realize the optimal promise of participating in the global mainstreams of digital financial services … dovetailing with strengthening the longer term global imperative of sustainable development.

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