Financial access 2011 : an overview of the supply-side data landscape

The lack of data has long been recognized as a major barrier to extending access to financial services to low-income households and small businesses. Considerable progress has been made in recent years. In June 2004 at a meeting of heads of state at Sea Island, Georgia, United States, the Group of Eight (G-8) endorsed the 'key principles of microfinance' developed by CGAP. In September 2009, the G-20 leaders made important commitments to financial services for the poor at the Pittsburgh Summit, and their commitment to financial inclusion has been reaffirmed at each subsequent Summit. At the Seoul Leaders' Summit in November 2010, the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) was established to institutionalize and implement the G-20 financial action plan. A central theme of GPFI is data and measurement, with one of the three GPFI subgroups tasked with identifying the existing financial inclusion data landscape, assessing data gaps, and developing key performance indicators. National governments have also taken action, commissioning demand-side data surveys, setting national financial inclusion targets, and establishing cross-governmental agencies to tackle the issue. This year's financial access presents an overview of the landscape of financial inclusion data, with a focus on supply-side data. It is markedly different from the two previous reports, published by CGAP and the World Bank Group, which provided data on the state of financial inclusion. The next Financial Access will include new financial access data. The overview that follows discusses the landscape of financial inclusion data, with a presentation of key demand- and supply-side data sources and a brief look at the findings from financial access 2010. Part three provides a discussion of supply-side data, with information on country-level data and how global-level data build on it. Part four focuses on the gaps in financial inclusion data and recommends ways these can be addressed by different stakeholders. The final section offers the perspectives of leading experts on financial inclusion data. Their first-hand experiences and reflections provide insights on why data are important and how the creators and users of data can make progress, both in data collection and in the use of data to further financial inclusion.