Vision of the Future: Financial Inclusion 2025

To get a good sense of what the future may hold for poor people and financial inclusion, CGAP organized a scenario thinking exercise that aimed to examine plausible, divergent futures. In four global workshops between October 2016 and February 2017, CGAP brought together more than 100 thought leaders, innovators, development actors, and academics to ponder the question: “In what ways will financial services influence inequality and economic participation for poor people by 2025?”

The goal was to generate possible future scenarios - not predictions - for financial inclusion, taking into account driving forces such as digital technologies, globalization, migration, and the changing world of work. This Focus Note summarizes the insights gained through this exercise. It also identifies the main opportunities to ensure financial services better serve the needs of poor people in a rapidly evolving context for organizations working to advance financial inclusion.