Report: 69% of Adults Around the World Have An Account

Accra, Ghana, June 26, 2018//-The latest report by the World Bank and its subsidiary-CGAP revealed that 69% of adults around the world have an account.


The represents  an increase of seven percentage points since 2014. The 69% translates into 515 million adults who have gained access to financial tools.

The report dubbed Global Findex 2017 was launched in Accra, Ghana  today said.

“The 2017 figures on overall account ownership continue the upward trajectory we’ve seen since the Global Findex database was first released—with financial inclusion rising 18 percentage points since 2011, when account ownership was 51 percent”, Dorothe Singer, an economist at the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group (DECREG), World Bank explained.

The 2017 Global Findex data, according to her reflect the continued evolution of financial inclusion. “Recent progress has been driven by digital payments, government policies, and a new generation of financial services accessed through mobile phones and the internet”.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Madam Singer who is one of the researchers of the report noted that the power of financial technology to expand access to and use of accounts is demonstrated most persuasively in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 21 percent of adults now have a mobile money account—nearly twice the share in 2014 and easily the highest of any region in the world.

While mobile money has been centered in East Africa, the 2017 update reveals that it has spread to West Africa and beyond.
Digital technology is also transforming the payments landscape. Globally, 52 percent of adults have sent or received digital payments in the past year, up from 42 percent in 2014.

Technology giants have moved into the financial sphere,  leveraging deep customer knowledge to provide a broad range of financial services.
Payments made through their technology platforms are facilitating higher account use in major emerging economies such as China, where 57 percent of account owners are using mobile phones or the internet to make purchases or pay bills—roughly twice the share in 2014.
Some advances have been made in helping women gain access to financial services. In India three years ago, men were 20 percentage points more likely than women to have an account. Today, India’s gender gap has shrunk to 6 percentage
points thanks to a strong government push to increase account ownership through biometric identification cards, the report added.
Still, in most of the world women continue to lag well behind men. Globally, 65 percent of women have an account compared with 72 percent of men, a gap of seven percentage points that is all but unchanged since 2011. Nor has equality in account ownership been achieved in other regards.

“The gap between rich and poor has not improved since 2014: account ownership is 13 percentage points higher among adults living in the wealthiest 60 percent of households within economies than among those in the poorest 40 percent. And urban populations continue to benefit from far broader access to finance than rural communities”, Madam Singer stated.
In China around 200 million rural adults remain outside the formal financial
system, she revealed.
“The continued involvement of businesses will be vital for unlocking opportunities to expand financial inclusion. Companies pay wages in cash to about 230 million unbanked adults worldwide; switching to electronic payrolls could help these  workers join the formal financial system”.

Mobile phones and the internet also offer strong openings for progress: globally, one billion financially excluded
adults already own a mobile phone and about 480 million have internet access.
But the private sector, governments, and development organizations all need to sharpen their focus on the use of accounts, which has stagnated for saving and borrowing. Without people actively using their accounts, the impact of our work
will be lost.
Touching on Ghana, the report also revealed that in six short years, the share of adults with access to a formal financial services account in Ghana grew from 29% in 2011 to 58% in 2017.

African Eye Report

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