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Purpose: This chapter proposes a number of measures for financial inclusion and financial exclusion.

Method: The author use ratio analysis and statistics to develop several indices of financial inclusion.

Findings: This chapter finds that there are several indices of financial inclusion that can contribute to inform policy making in the financial inclusion agenda.

Implications: The indices developed in this chapter can help policymakers toward designing better financial inclusion policies and can provide feedback and insight to policy makers to improve current financial inclusion policies.

Originality: The literature on financial inclusion and exclusion lacks a comprehensive index that measures the extent of financial inclusion and exclusion across countries. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by proposing some index or indicators of financial inclusion and exclusion.

Reaching at the true development state is one of the important policy agenda of any country or its provinces under it. The true development state can further be ensured if the country or province does inclusive development. Financial inclusion is one of the important agenda through which a country or a province's inclusive growth and development can be ensured. The present study aims to compute the magnitudes of financial inclusion and its associated income link across the 18 districts of the state of West Bengal in India, with the help of the four banking indicators or dimensions – number of branches, number of accounts, amounts of deposits, and amounts of credit of the scheduled commercial banks, for the period 1997–2018. It finds that except Kolkata, all the other districts have low IFI values. Kolkata is at the top with near 100 percent financial inclusion. Mostly the districts from the North Bengal region are having very low magnitudes whereas the districts from the South Bengal region are having relative high magnitude of financial inclusion. The ultimate effects of these levels of financial inclusion have led to very low level of net domestic products of the districts.

Due to its contribution to poverty reduction, which is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, inclusive finance is an issue of discussion. By using a bibliometric analysis approach, this study conducts performance analysis and keyword co-occurrences analysis under VOS viewer to synthesize the characteristics and essential dimensions of financial inclusion in Asia. This research studies 1,072 articles contributed by 1,928 authors, during the years 2005–2022. Numerous figures and networks are provided in order to comprehend publication trends, influential authors and their affiliations and countries, influential publications, and keyword occurrences. Six clusters were discovered, and financial inclusion is in the same cluster as financial literacy and financial service. This research will provide valuable insights for governments, regional authorities, and academic researchers, enabling them to enhance their comprehension of Asian financial inclusion and identify prospective avenues for future research. Ahead of this research, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of financial inclusion in Asian countries has not been conducted, as far as the authors’ knowledge goes. The study offers a comprehensive overview of financial inclusion in Asia and reveals insights into the field’s crucial messages. Future researchers can use this knowledge to obtain a deeper understanding of the field.

Conceptualizing development in terms of risk management has become a prominent feature of mainstream development discourse. This has led to a convergence between the rubrics of financial inclusion and risk management whereby improved access for poor households to private sector credit, insurance and savings products is represented as a necessary step toward building “resilience.” This convergence, however, is notable for a shallow understanding of the production and distribution of risks. By naturalizing risk as an inevitable product of complex systems, the approach fails to interrogate how risk is produced and displaced unevenly between social groups. Ignoring the structural and relational dimensions of risk production leads to an overly technical approach to risk management that is willfully blind to the intersection of risk and social power. A case study of the promotion of index-based livestock insurance in Mongolia – held as a model for innovative risk management via financial inclusion – is used to indicate the tensions and contradictions of this projected synthesis of development and risk management.

This chapter examines various conditions for optimality in financial inclusion. The optimal level of financial inclusion is achieved when basic financial services are provided to members of the population at a price that is affordable and that price is also economically sufficient to encourage providers of financial services to provide such financial services on a continual basis. Any level of financial inclusion that does not meet these conditions is sub-optimal and incentive-inefficient both for users and providers of financial services.

With the aim of analysing the growth and developmental aspects of bank credit allocations in the selected countries, the primary requirements are to see the trends of the lead variables, credit, gross domestic product (GDP) and Human Development Index (HDI), and get ideas on the descriptive statistics. The present chapter has attempted to do all these primary analyses across the countries for the period of 1990–2019. The study observes that the levels of GDP have increased for all the countries throughout the entire period with some downhill breaks during the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. There are also similar types of upward trends in the credit delivery to the private sectors of the countries over time with some exceptions in the second phase (2001–2010) for Germany and the first phase (1990–2000) for Brazil. On the other hand, the HDI values for all the countries have improved over time in the entire period of time and the developing countries in the list have progressed more in all three indicators, GDP, credit and HDI, compared to that of the developed countries in the list. The correlation analysis of credit with GDP and HDI shows positive coefficients in many of the developed and developing countries which primarily justify the existence of strong linkages of their financial sectors with their real sector and overall development.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the digital shift in finance, leading to more people having access to financial services and presenting new opportunities and challenges. This chapter looks at how digital finance has changed during the pandemic, focusing on how it’s made financial services more accessible, helped lessen gender disparities, boosted digital financial understanding, and dealt with potential risks. Since the pandemic, the use of digital financial services has grown rapidly, helping to overcome geographical limitations and increase financial inclusion. This change has been especially helpful for marginalized groups and women, significantly reducing the gender gap in financial inclusion. Meanwhile, understanding digital finance literacy has become crucial for effectively using digital financial services. However, the move towards digitization brings its own challenges, especially new financial risks. These risks require increased consumer awareness, better education, and stricter regulation. The chapter concluded by saying that the path of digital finance after the pandemic is a mix of opportunities and challenges. As a result, we need a careful and balanced approach to increase financial inclusion while also protecting against potential financial risks, ultimately aiming for a fairer, more stable, and more inclusive financial landscape.