Press Release: IMF’s 2014 Financial Access Survey Helps to Map Global Financial Inclusion

IMF News, September 16, 2014

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Canonical URL: Press Release: IMF’s 2014 Financial Access Survey Helps to Map Global Financial Inclusion

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released results of the fifth annual Financial Access Survey (FAS), the most comprehensive global source of data on access to, and use of, basic consumer financial services by households and nonfinancial corporations.
The 2014 FAS round was conducted with financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding to capture data on the use of mobile money services.
Data are available free of charge via the FAS website, http://fas.imf.org/, and also on the IMF eLibrary.

The FAS provides geographic and demographic data worldwide and supports quantitative analysis linking financial inclusion and economic growth.
Among African countries reporting data on commercial bank depositors:
- Depositors per 1,000 adults experienced a five-fold increase from 2004 to 2013.
- Real GDP per capita grew by 40-percent over the same period.
The FAS database contains 152 time series resulting in 47 key indicators grouped into two dimensions:
- (i) geographic outreach of financial services; and
- (ii) use of financial services.
The database includes annual data and metadata for 189 jurisdictions, including all G-20 economies, covering a ten-year period (2004–2013).

For the first time, the 2014 FAS includes indicators on access to and use of mobile money services.
Around 35 countries reported data on mobile money in the 2014 round.
Kenya (2014 FAS results) illustrates the transformational role of mobile money:
- In 2007, mobile money accounts represented 30 percent of deposit accounts in commercial banks.
- By 2009, mobile money accounts surpassed the number of commercial bank deposit accounts.
- Mobile money transactions increased from close to 5.5 million in 2007 to more than 700 million in 2013 (an increase of more than 130 times).

The 2014 round had a response rate of over 95 percent, with 184 reporting jurisdictions.
Overall coverage of survey indicators increased relative to the previous round.
To foster a common methodology, the FAS definitions, types of institutional units, and financial instruments are broadly consistent with the IMF’s Monetary and Financial Statistics Manual and its companion Compilation Guide.
The FAS is an officially recognized data source for the G-20 Basic Set of Financial Inclusion Indicators endorsed by the G-20 Leaders at the Los Cabos Summit in June 2012.

The FAS offers a quantitative foundation to assess the role of mobile money in expanding financial inclusion, particularly for populations that generally do not use commercial banks.
The positive correlation between increased use of commercial bank services (measure of financial inclusion) and increased GDP per capita (measure of economic growth) is emphasized as noteworthy when comparing financial inclusion trends.

Press Release No. 14/425 — September 16, 2014. IMF Communications Department.