Financial Inclusion Index

Financial Inclusion Index

News: The Reserve Bank of India has released the Composite Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) for the year ended 31st March 2022.

About:
• It is a comprehensive index incorporating details of banking, investments, insurance, postal as well as the pension sector in consultation with the government and respective sectoral regulators.
• It was developed by the RBI in 2021, without any ‘base year', and is published in July every year.
• It intends to capture the extent of financial inclusion across the country.

Parameters:
• It captures information on various aspects of financial inclusion in a single value ranging between 0 and 100, where 0 represents complete financial exclusion and 100 indicates full financial inclusion.
• It comprises three broad parameters (weights indicated in brackets) viz., Access (35%), Usage (45%), and Quality (20%) with each of these consisting of various dimensions, which are computed based on a number of indicators.

Key Findings:
• India’s Financial Inclusion Index has improved to 56.4 from 53.9 in the previous year 2021.
• The improvement has been seen across all its sub-indices (Access, Usage and Equality).

What does the Index indicate?
• It provides information on the level of financial inclusion and measures financial services for use in internal policy making.
• It can be used directly as a composite measure in development indicators.
• It enables fulfilment of G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators requirements.
• It also facilitates researchers to study the impact of financial inclusion and other macroeconomic variables.