ASEAN Financial Inclusion for What? Connecting the Region's Prosperity to People's Prosperity Post-2015

Financial inclusion is increasingly seen as a preferred policy to enable poverty reduction and economic growth. Recent data provided by household-level surveys in the region are reinforcing these policies. The data suggests that financial inclusion does not always follow economic growth but that, conversely, inclusion can help trigger growth.

This paper goes on to make recommendations about how to achieve financial inclusion in a way that will move both households and small enterprises out of poverty while sustaining growth for the region’s 600 million people. This could prove particularly significant for countries aspiring to graduate from least developed country status or to break out of the middle-income trap