Nigeria and other sub-Saharan African economies remained at the fringe of global indices for financial inclusion as the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday released the results of the eighth annual
Financial Access Survey (FAS), which collects annual data on indicators
tracking financial access—an important pillar of financial inclusion...
The document provides insights on the
availability and use of financial products such as consumer and firm
deposit accounts, loans, and insurance policies across the globe. The
information IMF said, is based on administrative data collected from
both traditional commercial banks or other deposit-taking institutions
as well as digital, mobile money financial service providers.
FAS data show progress in two indicators
of the Sustainable Development Goals: the number of bank branches and
automated teller machines (ATMs), with most of the growth concentrated
in Asia. However, some other regions still lag in these financial access
dimensions. This is particularly the case in Sub-Saharan Africa, where
there are on average five times fewer bank branches and ATMs per adult
than in the rest of the world. FAS data also show that innovations in
financial access, such as mobile money services, keep making inroads. In
Afghanistan, for instance, there are now more than six times as many
mobile money agents as ATMs, facilitating direct deposit of payroll for
civil servants through their mobile phones.
As the importance of financial inclusion
becomes increasingly evident, demand for more granular financial access
data has also increased. A growing interest in ensuring equitable access
to financial services for all has created a need for
gender-disaggregated financial access statistics. In response, the FAS
collaborated with national authorities to assess their capacity to
extract these statistics directly from administrative sources.
As financial inclusion is very dynamic,
the current FAS round illustrates well the importance of investing in
collecting more granular financial access data. For example, the newly
available data suggest a financial access gender gap. On average, women
hold 40 percent of deposit accounts and receive a similar proportion of
outstanding loans. However, country-specific data also reveal progress
made in narrowing this gap.
For instance, Malaysia saw its share of
female borrowers increase from 37 percent in 2004 to 44 percent in 2016.
The historical perspective of this new information opens the door to
policy-relevant research questions, such as the causality between loans
tailored to women entrepreneurs and the share of female borrowers.
The FAS has been conducted since 2009
with generous financial support provided by the Netherlands’ Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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