Over recent years millions of people who had been excluded from formal financial services have gained access to financial accounts. While this is a step forward, low use and inactivity keeps account dormancy rates persistently high. In light of this, the financial inclusion community is renewing its efforts to understand the role financial services play in the lives of poor people and how financial services can improve their well-being. We are asking the questions: Financial inclusion for what? What should we invest in? What are the promising welfare-enhancing solutions? Which ones should we experiment with? How do we achieve the nuance required to guide financial inclusion policy decisions that enable financial services to add value to poor people's lives? This book proposes a learning agenda based on extensive consultation with donors, researchers, and practitioners who support financial inclusion.

How can financial services, such as credit, deposit accounts, financial transfers, and insurance be provided to people in need? This challenging and complex issue has been a topic of interest for the international aid community for decades. Drawing on renowned experts in microfinance and financial inclusion, this Research Agenda sheds much-needed light on this multifaceted challenge and points the way ahead for future research.

Limited access to financial services impedes economic development in impoverished communities, which has prompted policy makers, private institutions, and NGOs to develop strategies to address financial inclusion. Samuel Kirwan examines the various types of policy implementation and considers the efficacy of such economic interventions.

In 2011 the World Bank—with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—launched the Global Findex database, the world's most comprehensive data set on how adults save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. Drawing on survey data collected in collaboration with Gallup, Inc., the Global Findex database covers more than 140 economies around the world. The initial survey round was followed by a second one in 2014 and by a third in 2017. Compiled using nationally representative surveys of more than 150,000 adults age 15 and above in over 140 economies, The Global Findex Database 2017: Measuring Financial Inclusion and the Fintech Revolution includes updated indicators on access to and use of formal and informal financial services. It has additional data on the use of financial technology (or fintech), including the use of mobile phones and the Internet to conduct financial transactions. The data reveal opportunities to expand access to financial services among people who do not have an account—the unbanked—as well as to promote greater use of digital financial services among those who do have an account. The Global Findex database has become a mainstay of global efforts to promote financial inclusion. In addition to being widely cited by scholars and development practitioners, Global Findex data are used to track progress toward the World Bank goal of Universal Financial Access by 2020 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The database, the full text of the report, and the underlying country-level data for all figures—along with the questionnaire, the survey methodology, and other relevant materials—are available at www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.

The past two decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in financial inclusion, both from policymakers and researchers. This paper surveys the main findings from the literature, documenting the trends over time and gaps that have arisen across regions, income levels, and gender, among others. It points out that structural, as well as policy-related, factors, such as encouraging banking competition or channeling government payments through bank accounts, play an important role, and describes the potential macro and microeconomic benefits that can be derived from greater financial inclusion. It argues that policy should aim to identify and reduce frictions holding back financial inclusion, rather than targeting specific levels of inclusion. Finally, it suggests areas for future research.

The official emphasis on financial inclusion keeps re-emerging in policy discourses and among bankers, who are critical of its architecture, despite the earnestness and enthusiasm in pursuing it. In the face of initial bursts of euphoria, the movement develops fatigue for commercial reasons. The agenda regularly falls by the side –first from discussion tables and then from policy engagement. Banks face many constraints; the high cost of driving financial inclusion in remote geographies is not sustainable. The main reason for the earlier failures was that the goals were more idealistic than realistic However, in the last few years, that agenda appears to have gained significant traction even as it is still going through the honeymoon period in the Jan-Dhan avatar. People have wholeheartedly embraced it and see great promise in it. But they are still not entirely convinced of it achieving its touted potential. Access to suitable finances is critical in overcoming the complex everyday realities for those living in penny economies. It can allow them to move out of poverty or build resilience to absorb a financial shock without sinking deeper into debt. Financial services increase savings, remove barriers to credit, ease the burden of debt, and help people weather unexpected tragedies.