The Road to Financial Inclusion: Solid Progress, Big Challenges

The success of the microcredit years showed us that it is not poverty that generates financial exclusion but rather the opposite: financial exclusion generates poverty. Unfortunately, microcredit alone was not enough to solve the problem. Although it was demonstrated that access to, and the use of, savings accounts, credit, insurance, etc. had a positive impact on opportunities for the poorest, no single financial service was sufficient to trigger major progress. In the current conversation around financial inclusion, emphasis is now placed on the fact that it is not enough to offer one or another service; we need them all, and all at the same time.