Over 7 million Ghanaians are still without a bank account or mobile money account

desmond frimpong

May 28, 2018 1:22 PM

According to the report titled “Gains in Financial Inclusion, Gains for a Sustainable World”, the unbanked population may not significantly contribute to the economy since financial inclusion is an important factor in economic development.

A new release by the World Bank shows that 7.3 million people in Ghana lack any form of financial account.

The report means that over 7 million Ghanaians have no mobile money account or bank account for electronic transactions.

The unbanked population risks the benefit of financial inclusion such as receiving and transferring money easily, getting an insurance, starting and expanding businesses, investing in education or health, managing risk, and weather financial shocks.

The report highlighted the developmental potential of financial inclusion especially from the use of digital financial services, including mobile money services, payment cards, and other financial technology applications.

Overall, the research showed that 1.7 billion people across the world did not have financial account.

Excerpt from the World Bank report

Financial inclusion has emerged as a critical development challenge and is a hot topic among policymakers, development practitioners and the private sector. In fact, the foundation of financial inclusion is woven into seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

In 2011 the World Bank Group launched Global Findex, a database which tracks financial inclusion efforts around the world. Its third edition was just released in April 2018.

The 2011 Findex data showed that 2.5 billion adults were ‘unbanked’ and the 2011 IFC MSME Finance Gap database showed that over 200 million micro to medium enterprises in developing economies lacked access to affordable financial services and credit.

A lot of progress has been made over the past few years toward extending financial access and the number of unbanked adults has fallen to 1.7 billion, according to the latest Findex data.

The gender gap in account ownership is not significantly narrowing: In 2011, 47 percent of women and 54 per cent of men had an account; in 2014, 58 percent of women had an account, compared to 65 per cent of men.

Regionally, the gender gap is largest in South Asia, where 37 percent of women have an account compared to 55 per cent of men (an 18 percentage point gap).

desmond frimpong

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