Digital finance presents a potentially transformational opportunity to advance financial inclusion. In this report commissioned by the Asian Development Bank, the role that digital finance can play in accelerating financial inclusion, focusing on four Southeast Asian markets – Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Myanmar is discussed.
It is a result of an extensive study conducted by Oliver Wyman and MicroSave – informed by more than 80 stakeholder interviews across the four markets, extensive secondary research, and economic analysis – and discusses, quantifies the impact of digital finance across key financial products and services with a specific focus on lower income customer segments. Our research finds that digital financial solutions could play a significant part in closing gaps in financial inclusion. They could address about 40% of the volume of unmet demand for payments services and 20% of the unmet credit needs in the Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) and MSME segments.