IMF Releases the 2020 Financial Access Survey Results

IMF News, November 9, 2020

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On November 9, 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released the results of the eleventh annual Financial Access Survey (FAS).
The FAS provides a supply-side database on access to and use of financial services covering 189 jurisdictions, with more than 100 series and historical data from 2004.
The 2020 round offers a pre-pandemic snapshot of the levels of financial access to both traditional and digital financial services.

Access to and usage of financial services, as measured by the FAS indicators, has deepened over time in low- and middle-income economies.
The number of ATMs per 100,000 adults has grown for the past few years.
The number of commercial bank branches has remained relatively stable at the 2013 level.
Non-branch retail agent outlets and digital financial services—such as mobile money and mobile and internet banking—continue to play a significant role in advancing financial access, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
Persistent access challenges:
- Women and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) have often been excluded from the financial system.
- Progress in closing the financial access gender gap varies across countries, with microfinance institutions playing an important role in satisfying unmet demands for financial services for women in some economies.
- Lending to SMEs continues to be constrained.

The IMF developed a Financial Access COVID-19 Policy Tracker to document policy measures implemented to facilitate financing for SMEs and the use of digital financial services across the world.
The Policy Tracker aims at facilitating information exchange and peer learning among country authorities about measures related to SME finance and greater use of digital financial services in the current pandemic context.
The next round of FAS data collection—scheduled to start in March 2021—may help provide useful insights on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial access and use.

SMEs account for 90 percent of businesses and 50 percent of employment worldwide.
Country authorities have put in place measures to help SMEs weather the pandemic; the measures documented by the Policy Tracker have been classified into five categories:
- (i) debt moratoriums
- (ii) loan guarantees
- (iii) lower interest rates
- (iv) tax relief
- (v) financial assistance

Digital financial services (mobile money and mobile and internet banking) have two key features that support undisrupted financial transactions during the pandemic:
- high market penetration
- minimal physical contact to transact
Country authorities enacted emergency measures to encourage the use of digital financial services; these measures documented in the Policy Tracker can be classified into four broad categories:
- (i) person-to-person (P2P) transaction fee cuts
- (ii) increased balance and transaction limits
- (iii) easing of know your customer (KYC) requirements
- (iv) simplified transaction processes
Bazarbash et al. (2020) discuss the COVID-19 response measures related to mobile money and its associated risks in an IMF Special Series Note on COVID-19.

The 2020 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.

IMF Communications Department, November 9, 2020

Financial Access COVID-19 Policy Tracker
- Financial Access COVID-19 Policy Tracker (Markdown version)
- Financial Access COVID-19 Policy Tracker (XLSX)