REDUCING INEQUALITY

While financial inclusion itself is not a sustainable development goal, it underpins 8 of the 17 SDGS including reducing poverty, income inequality, and gender inequality, so much so that the World Bank has a goal of universal financial inclusion by 2020, which is even more aggressive a timeline than the SDGS. Due to ‘de-risking’, as a region, the Caribbean is becoming increasingly financially excluded on a national level. Poverty levels are already around 40%. According to the World Bank, around 2 billion people (40% of the world’s adults, 50% of the world’s poorest) are unbanked. Over one billion women worldwide are unbanked, underpinning gender inequality, which costs 10%-37% of GDP across all regions. 73% of the unbanked reside in 25 developing countries.

Download Marla’s report “The Future is Female and Digital (in that Order)” here.