About 2.5 billion adults, just over half the world’s adult population, lack bank accounts. If we are to realize the goal of extending banking and other financial services to this vast “unbanked” population, we need to consider not only such product innovations as microfinance and mobile banking but also issues of data accuracy, impact assessment, risk mitigation, technology adaptation, financial literacy, and local context. In Banking the World, a new collection of research papers edited by Robert Cull, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, and Jonathan Morduch, experts take up these topics, reporting on new research that will guide both policy makers and scholars in a broader push to extend financial markets.
Contributors include Miriam Bruhn, Alberto Chaia, Daryl Collins, Nguyen Viet Cuong, Dean Karlen, Xavier Gine, and Anni Heikkila, among others. Jonathan Morduch's contribution, 10 Research Questions, is also available online at FAI.