Page 154 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS422 Damola Owalade
4. Discussion
Measuring financial inclusion has been focused on a product-based lens
with M&E framework of FI strategies mainly measuring the level of penetration
of savings, credit, and insurance products. However, using financial products
is a means to an end of paying for use cases such as getting an education or
starting a business where value to livelihood is derived. Therefore, a customer
centric approach to measuring financial inclusion is crucial to understanding
how financial services can customer needs to fulfil non-financial outcomes
such as improving living standards.
A customer centric approach to measuring financial inclusion requires
multiple data sets to measure the four measurement domains based on
ensemble and time-based dimensions. Demand side surveys have been the
gold standard as one can assess the financial life of a unique customer across
product types while drawing on behavioural attributes to explain the levels of
access and usage. Demand side surveys are adequate in providing cross
sectional data but they are usually expensive, time consuming and lack the
dynamism to observe unique customer segments across time.
The merging of demand side surveys with administrative data makes
robust FI data management possible to assess the outcomes of using financial
services. The linkage of administrative data with survey data is a potential best
practice in providing quality data to inform policy interventions to expand
financial inclusion in order to reap the potential positive outcomes on micro-
economic and macro-economic indicators.
The findings from the two case studies discussed in this paper show that
improving the quality of administrative data on financial services can
potentially reduce the cost and time taken to assess customer experience in
using financial services. As discussed, there are challenges in collecting
additional information from customers observed on administrative data
platforms. Financial inclusion stakeholders such as the regulators and financial
service providers are integral to the goal of improving the quality of admin
data. This calls for a policy direction that looks to develop a financial inclusion
data ecosystem with the requisite data sharing protocols hinging on sound
consumer data privacy laws.

5. Conclusion
Financial inclusion is one of the developmental pursuits that can affect
economic growth and the improve livelihoods. There has been a global
emphasis on interventions that directly impact on development goals, starting
with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which prioritise certain
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11 https://www.uncdf.org/financial-inclusion-and-the-sdgs

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