Financial inclusion: How digital lending can help
IBS Intelligence is partnering with Sopra Banking Software to promote the Sopra Banking Summit , which takes place 18-22 October 2021. The summit is tackling the biggest issues in the financial sector. This weeklong festival of FinTech will touch on the hottest topics in financial services and highlight the new paths industry leaders are taking.
The following article was originally published here .
Financial inclusion – its efficacy, implication and urgency – is becoming one of our industry’s biggest talking points. And this is a good thing. The more light that’s shed on the issue, the more likely we are as a collective to push its agenda.
by Nelly Kambiwa, Financial Inclusion Director MEA, Sopra Banking Software
However, there are still question marks over what exactly financial inclusion means. For some, it’s tied intrinsically to demographics; for others, it’s about politics. Most interpretations are not wrong, and almost all are well meaning, but perhaps the clearest and most succinct definition comes from the World Bank :
“Financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way.” Nelly Kambiwa, Financial Inclusion Director MEA, Sopra Banking Software Without this ‘access to useful and affordable financial products and services,’ people may not have a secure place to store money, no effective and free means of receiving payment, and no safe, reliable way to make payments.
And while great strides have been made around financial inclusion, there’s still a long way to go. According to the most recent Findex data, there are still close to 1.7 billion adults in the world without access to basic financial services
Financial inclusion in Africa
Of course, financial inclusion is not a challenge limited to a particular country, region or continent; rather, it affects areas all over the world. However, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to look at financial inclusion in Africa, and how digital lending can help to improve the financial lives of millions of Africans.
According to Global Finance , 50% of the African population is unbanked, equating to 350 million people . This is already a problem that needs addressing, but with the African population rising quickly – it’s set to double over the next 30 years, adding an […]
