Financial Access Indicators Stocktake

This paper aims to develop a comprehensive inventory of existing financial services access and usage data sources.The paper:

• Discusses what access to financial services is, and why it matters;
• Concludes that access is indeed important and it is therefore imperative to find a robust way of measuring it;
• Proposes a classification of potential access indicators in terms of:
  • Direct measurement at the micro and macro levels;
  • Indirect measurement through potential proxies at the macro-level.
• Considers the following conceptual and practical problems relating to the assessment of access to financial services:
  • Problems of measurement;
  • The informal and formal sectors;
  • Measuring access versus usage;
  • The distinction between direct and indirect metrics.

The paper finds that:

• Micro metrics - particularly household surveys - tend to yield the richest results for those concerned with increasing access to financial services;
• A lot of work needs to be done to produce data on financial sector access, usage and exclusion that are comparable in any systematic way across countries.

The paper concludes by hoping that the review will help facilitate comparison of the various possible indicators and raise some issues that need to be tackled in agreeing on a common set of indicators.