2021 Trends in International Funding for Financial Inclusion

CGAP’s annual Funder Survey breaks down financial inclusion funding data to offer new intelligence about who’s doing what and where—insights that could be used to inform future development programming and coordination, to ultimately impact the lives of people living in poverty. 

This year’s Survey found that international funders committed $68 billion for financial inclusion in 2021. Private investors were the primary drivers of financial inclusion funding growth in 2021, which may reflect a rebound in private investment following a pandemic slowdown, as well as a cooling from public funders following their stronger role in 2020. This edition of the survey applied a new approach to segmenting financial inclusion commitments, enabling a better understanding of project purpose and how well funding is targeted to specific market needs. 

For 2021, CGAP collected data from the survey’s full set (51 funders), comprising $43.9 billion in commitments. To enable comparability of data over time, year-over-year analysis outside the global estimate is based on a subset of the 31 funders who have consistently participated, and who represented $41.2 billion of commitments in 2021. The CGAP Funder Survey is the most comprehensive resource available on international funding for microfinance and financial inclusion.