Significance Of Financial Inclusion For Economic Growth And Its Expansion Opportunities Through Digitization In India

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Aditya Dhawan, Dr Manas Roy

Abstract

Financial services help people to come out of poverty by enabling them to invest in health, education, technology, business which may drive development. Many poor people not only in India lack the basic financial services like bank account, insurance, card payment, e-wallets etc. and rely only on cash transactions which is risky and hard to manage as well. World Bank has also made financial inclusion as a key to “growth and development”.  Financial inclusion (F.I) can be defined “as the process of ensuring access to financial services, timely and adequate credit needed by vulnerable, weaker sections and low-income groups at an af-fordable cost”. It is not only limited to access of banking services but also an array of other “financial services” like equity, mutual fund investment, insurance services etc. Further it acts as safeguards from the financial exploitation and binds them to an organized and systematic financial sector rather than left to exploit by unorganized and informal money lenders. The digital technology adding more options for financial inclusion like transferring funds, open e-RD or e-FD, online PPF account, De-mat account and non-banking services like insurance, investing in mutual funds etc. Thus, the benefits of financial inclusion are increasing from account ownership to number of other financial services which reduces the scope of cor-ruption and increase transparency. This study tries to find out the status of F.I with special reference to digital India and discusses the road ahead through new and improved digital technology

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