Financial inclusion is a development vision in which low income and disadvantaged women and men living everywhere in a country enjoy permanent access to a wide range of financial services, delivered by different types of financial and non-financial institutions through a variety of convenient mechanisms.

Improving the access by large numbers of disadvantaged women and men to sustainable financial services is now recognized as a financial sector development issue requiring systemic change of the formal financial system to overcome the barriers that have excluded the majority of the population.

Financial sector development has both a direct and indirect impact on reducing poverty because, firstly, of the link between financial sector development and more equitable growth and, secondly, through its impact in broadening access to finance by all.