Felaban financial inclusion study shows significant advances
In its fourth annual financial inclusion report, Latin American banking federation Felaban said regional per capita bank deposits doubled in the last 10 years.
The report also indicated that the loans from the Latin American banking sector reached 38.7% of regional GDP and that GDP per capita in the region averaged US$8,100.
Felaban added that various financial inclusion indicators (level of access, use and quality) have "improved significantly" over the last decade, though to a less dynamic degree than in other regions of the world.
One example offered in the report showed that the percentage of adults with a formal savings account in Latin America at the end of 2017 was 54%, higher than the 51% registered in 2014 but still lower than the improvement seen in India and Eastern Europe.
The demographic coverage of banking service channels has improved significantly: bank offices per 100,000 inhabitants went from 15 in 2007 to 19 in 2017, being less dynamic than channels such as ATMs that went from 23 for every 100,000 to 49 in the same period.
The report also showed that access to non-banking correspondents had grown from 19 channels per 100,000 residents in 2007 to 118 in 2017.
That strong growth is "responding to the need of the population to adequately cover the geography of an extensive continent and sectors with difficult access," read the report.
Another significant finding indicates that mobile banking has been growing by leaps and bounds.
Mobile banking has shown an average annual growth of 37% in the number of operations, according to Felaban's aggregate figures for the region.
This turns out to be consistent with a greater penetration of mobile telephony and access to the internet in Latin America. However, financial education still has a key role to play, noted Felaban, especially in empowering the public and improving knowledge ranging from education in language, mathematics, finance and decision making.
"In view of the above, and despite the joint and coordinated efforts of the public sector and the private sector, there is still a way to go," read the report. "Public policy has a preponderant role when considering the issue of financial inclusion as an integral part of economic development, a door for the modernization of the economy and a way to hook more portions of the population to the formal sectors of the economy."
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