The first step in improving access is measuring it

While data on financial sector depth – aggregate credit, stock market liquidity, etc. – are readily available, data on access to and use of financial services, especially on the household level are wanting, partly because of the cost of such data collection, partly because of methodological hurdles. 

In the absence of micro-data, researchers have sought to create synthetic headline indicators, combining more readily available data on the number of deposit or loan accounts with the results of a few existing household surveys. 

These headline indicators reveal a large variation in the use of financial services: almost all households use finance in many Continental European countries, but on average fewer than one in three households do in most of the developing world.

Financial exclusion thus affects not only the poor, but also large proportion of the non-poor population in many developing countries.