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Financial inclusion ensures customers are able to access useful and affordable mainstream financial products and services that best meet their needs. It is the ease of availability and equitability to access financial services regardless of an individual’s circumstances, and is a key enabler to reducing poverty.
Some of the most vulnerable groups affected by financial exclusion include overindebted, homeless, (long-term) unemployed and the elderly. Without an address a homeless customer could be refused access to banking products, an elderly customer may lack the skills or means, and the costs to either contact a bank or the high charges related to a high risk customer could price a low income family out the market.
Advances in fintech such as digital banking, and greater emphasis on customer experience and service are making financial inclusion easier to achieve. But it is estimated there there are still 1.3 million unbanked people in the UK.