Having reliable and up-to-date financial inclusion data is critical for diagnosing the state of financial inclusion, designing evidence-based policies that help expand access, and monitoring the progress these policies. To this end policymakers are taking an active role in collecting financial inclusion data. Financial inclusion data is also of interest to the private sector and researchers/academics and thus may be disseminated to or collected in partnership with these other stakeholders.

There are different approaches and techniques to measure financial inclusion. Defining financial inclusion is a key first step in setting the indicators and benchmarks against which policy is developed and monitored, and for providing guidelines for data collection. Policymakers may gather data about the supply of financial services from financial service providers themselves, or they may gather information about the demand for financial services through household and individual surveys on the topic of financial services.

Strategies to improve financial inclusion data range from leveraging available data, to modifying existing surveys with new questions, or even to implementing new large-scale or targeted financial surveys. The decision of how and whether to collect further data involves a trade-off between resource constraints, the size of the information gap and the data needs of stakeholders. Supply-side data can be cost-effective, but do not provide answers to the same questions as those gained from demand-side surveys. To be effective for monitoring impact, surveys need to be repeated over time.