The term ‘financial inclusion’ has rapidly entered the mainstream policy discourse in the past seven years. Outside of its natural home in the development community and the financial sector, it now features regularly even in tightly worded G20 Summit communiques.

This recognition follows decades of loud activism by some and quiet fieldwork by others. Starting in the 1970s, pioneers like Muhammed Yunus of Grameen Bank not only recognised that poor people wanted and could repay small loans, but they went on to promote the proposition that scaling the microcredit sector was in fact an important part of a development agenda. The UN year of Microcredit in 2006 represented both the apogee of that movement and the beginnings of a subtle shift to the broader but more elusive concept of ‘inclusive financial sectors’.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Porteous is the founder and Managing Director of BFA, a consulting firm based in Boston. He is also an Associate at the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI).