Beyond bank accounts

Protect investor confidence to increase financial inclusion

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has done well to construct an index to show the extent of financial inclusion in the country. The financial inclusion index (FI-Index) level for March 2021 was at 53.9, compared to 43.4 in March 2017. It captures broad aspects of financial inclusion, like access, usage, and quality in a single value, where zero means complete exclusion and 100 indicates full inclusion. As the FI-Index will be published every year, it will give a sense as to how the country is progressing on this all-important parameter. The reading of 53.9 for March 2021 shows that