Survey Shows Financial Access Growing Despite Financial Crisis
* Even as economies were contracting last year, access to formal finance in developing countries grew.
* “Financial Access 2010” shows promising trends in financial inclusion, including the expansion of retail infrastructure and use of new technologies to deliver financial services cost effectively.
WASHINGTON DC, 16th September, 2010: Despite an environment dominated by tight credit markets and slowing economies, more people in developing countries gained access to financial services in 2009.
This is of upper-most importance, as the majority of the world’s poor still have to resort to informal services to manage their family’s financial lives – saving under the mattress, borrowing from family and friends, or (greedy) money lenders.
But around the world, policymakers are committing to an agenda that supports financial inclusion and offers greater access to safe, formal financial services.
An estimated 2,7 billion people around the world have no access to formal financial services, which are both safer and less expensive than the informal alternatives. But new technologies are introducing more cost-effective retail infrastructure, and the picture of financial inclusion is shifting.
Still, regulators will need to ensure that the capacity to implement sound regulations keeps pace with the introduction of new laws, so that increased outreach maximizes the benefits for poor people.
This is the emerging picture of global financial inclusion contained in “Financial Access 2010”, the second annual survey of financial regulators in more than 140 countries by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and the World Bank Group.
The survey found that the number of bank accounts around the world was growing even as the volume of loan and deposit accounts dropped.
Sixty-five deposit accounts were added per 1.000 adults in 2009, representing a 4,3 per cent average growth in the number of deposit accounts. The impact of the financial crisis could be more clearly seen in the use of credit services, with the number of loans per 1.000 adults broadly unchanged between 2008 and 2009.
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