Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

The author, in this study sponsored by IMTFI, assesses whether the poor have been able to gain access to banking facilities in the backdrop of the initiatives taken by the authorities to provide finance for all. Financial inclusion or providing finance for all has been increasingly recognized in recent times as a pre‐requisite to economic development and poverty reduction. Financial inclusion can be defined as the process of ensuring timely delivery of financial services at affordable cost to the disadvantaged sections of the society. Financial inclusion empowers the poor to deal with the formal financial institutions, and thereby to enhance their savings, investment and risk‐absorption capabilities. This enables them not only to facilitate consumption smoothing on a day‐to‐day basis but also eventually to come out of poverty. Despite the expansion of formal financial facilities following the financial sector reforms in Sri Lanka, the available evidence suggests that a greater proportion of the poor in the country are still unbanked.