IMF Releases the 2019 Financial Access Survey Results

IMF News, September 30, 2019

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On September 30, 2019, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released the results of the tenth annual Financial Access Survey (FAS).
The dataset covers 189 jurisdictions with more than 150 indicators on financial access and use with historical data from 2004.
The FAS is a supply-side dataset to measure and monitor financial inclusion and benchmark progress against peers.

2019 marks the tenth anniversary of the FAS; the FAS was launched in 2009.
Key past and recent enhancements:
- Introduced country-level data on mobile money in 2014.
- Adopted gender statistics in the FAS questionnaire in 2018.
- Expanded coverage of innovations in traditional banking services, including branchless banking and debit and credit cards in circulation.
- 2019 introduces new data series on mobile and internet banking and gender statistics for deposit-taking microfinance institutions.
Reporting improvements in the current round:
- Number of countries reporting mobile money data increased from 66 last year to 71.
- Number of countries reporting data disaggregated by gender increased from 35 to 47.
Two FAS indicators—number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults and number of automated teller machines (ATMs) per 100,000 adults—have been adopted to monitor Target 8.10 of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
FAS regional workshops were started in 2018; two regional workshops, in Thailand and Mauritius, have been conducted so far.

Mobile money has a profound impact on financial inclusion, particularly in countries without deep banking penetration.
Afghanistan example:
- Less than 200 out of 1,000 adults have bank accounts.
- More than 80 percent of the population has access to a cellular phone.
- In the past five years, the value of mobile money transactions has grown fourfold in Afghanistan to reach 1.2 percent of GDP in 2018.
Regions with a large mobile money footprint, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are leveraging mobile money users to expand traditional banking services (example: M-Shwari account in Kenya accessible through M-PESA).

FAS data suggests muted growth in the number of commercial bank branches globally may reflect a decline in branches in advanced economies of North America and Europe.
This trend is indicative of a shift toward mobile and internet banking.
Growth in mobile and internet banking is not limited to high-income countries; example:
- In Mongolia, the volume of mobile and internet banking transactions increased fourfold between 2015 and 2018.

FAS data suggests disparities persist in the use of financial services between men and women, especially in low- and lower middle-income countries.
Studies suggest discriminatory laws can be an underlying reason for women’s financial exclusion, highlighting the importance of regulatory reforms and women-oriented policies.

FAS 2019 suggests that bank lending to SMEs has remained stagnant at around 6 percent of GDP over the past five years.
There are large cross-country variations in the growth of SME lending.
Improvements in SME financing in countries like Georgia, Mongolia and Fiji may in part be due to effective and targeted SME policies as well as interventions in partnership with international development agencies.

The 2019 FAS Trends and Developments edition illustrates FAS coverage areas: (i) mobile money; (ii) traditional banking; (iii) use of financial services by women; and (iv) credit to SMEs.
The 2019 FAS was made possible with the generous support of the IMF’s Data for Decisions (D4D) Fund.
The latest FAS data with country-specific metadata are available at http://data.imf.org/FAS.

Source: IMF Communications Department, September 30, 2019.