Banking Services for Everyone? Barriers to Bank Access and Use around the World

By Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, María Soledad Martínez Pería. 2006

595 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using information from 193 banks in 58 countries, the authors develop and analyze indicators of physical access, affordability, and eligibility barriers to deposit, loan, and payment services. They find substantial cross-country variation in barriers to banking and show that in many countries these barriers can potentially exclude a significant share of the population from using banking services. Correlations with bank- and country-level variables show that bank size and the availability of physical infrastructure are the most robust predictors of barriers. Further, the authors find evidence that in more competitive, open, and transparent economies, and in countries with better contractual and informational frameworks, banks impose lower barriers. Finally, though foreign banks seem to charge higher fees than other banks, in foreign dominated banking systems fees are lower and it is easier to open bank accounts and to apply for loans. On the other hand, in systems that are predominantly government-owned, customers pay lower fees but also face greater restrictions in terms of where to apply for loans and how long it takes to have applications processed. These findings have important implications for policy reforms to broaden access.

Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics, Finance

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d7abd7a35d262bba82eb14d048d76330fdf558b

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Citations in the corpus

Competition in the Financial Sector: Overview of Competition Policies (2009, background): “Similar analysis for developing countries (Beck et al. 2008) shows even larger differences, especially when scaled by income level.”
The foundations of financial inclusion : understanding ownership and use of formal accounts (2012, unknown): “…a checking account in Sierra Leone, for example, an adult must pay the equivalent of 27 percent of that country’s GDP per capita in annual fees (Beck et al., 2008), which is likely a reason why 44 percent of non-account-holders in that country cited cost as a reason for not having a formal…”
Access to Financial Services and the Financial Inclusion Agenda Around the World: A Cross-Country Analysis with a New Data Set (2011, unknown): “In more recent years the debate expanded to include the notion of financial “exclusion” as a barrier to economic development and the need to build inclusive financial systems (Beck et al., 2008).”
How do lending relationships affect access to credit and loan conditions in microlending (2011, unknown): “the time span between loan application and approval date (Beck et al., 2008).”
Access to Finance (2010, unknown): “The number of loans per 100,000 people in Bangladesh, for example, is 54.73 and the number of deposits for 1,000 people is 228.75 placing it at the 31 st and 43 rd spot respectively in a World Bank survey of 53 developed and developing countries (Beck, et al., 2006).”