The Social Frontier of Financial Inclusion

What is the frontier of financial inclusion? Of course, there is a geographical frontier: people in rural areas are more often excluded from the financial system. There’s also a technological frontier: while digital technology has greatly expanded the reach of financial services, those on the other side of the digital divide are being left behind. But there’s also a social frontier: often in the form of social norms that dictate who can – and can’t – use financial services.

This episode features Women’s Micro Bank, a women-owned bank in Papua New Guinea that pushed geographical and technological boundaries in its attempts to expand women’s access to banking services but ran into its biggest challenges at the social frontier.