NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, November 1, 2013

As President Kim pointed out earlier this month at the plenary of the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings, 2.5 billion adults worldwide aren’t using the formal financial system. He used the statistic to illustrate the Bank’s new commitment to harnessing knowledge and becoming a bolder institution, a pledge he quickly followed through on by launching a new initiative to provide universal financial access to all working-age adults by 2020.

We’re thrilled to see high-level citations of Global Findex data, particularly in the context of spurring greater action to increase financial access for the world’s poor. We certainly believe that the 2011 Findex data have been a valuable tool for benchmarking, diagnostics, and cross-sectional analyses related to financial inclusion. But the best is yet to come.

We’ve spent much of this year laying the groundwork for the 2014 Findex database, which will add a time-series dimension to the Findex data, giving policy makers, practitioners, and researchers a powerful tool to measure financial inclusion over time, assess the impact of policies and private sector initiatives, and develop a better understanding of the links between financial inclusion and other development outcomes.