Financial Inclusion Index

In News 

The Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) has improved to 56.4 in March 2022 vis-à-vis 53.9 in March 2021, with growth witnessed across all the sub-indices.

•  The index is published annually in July.

Financial Inclusion Index

• About:
  • The RBI developed the composite financial inclusion index to capture the extent of financial inclusion across the country by including details of banking, investments, insurance, postal as well as the pension sector.
• Parameters: 
  • The index comprises three parameters including access, usage and quality. 
    • It comprises three broad parameters — access with 35% weightage, usage with 45% weightage and quality with 20% weightage. It incorporates details of banking, investments, insurance, postal as well as the pension sector.
• Features: 
  • The Index is responsive to ease of access, availability and usage of services, and quality of services.
  • The index captures information on various aspects of financial inclusion in a single value ranging between 0 and 100, where 0 represents complete financial exclusion and 100 indicates full financial inclusion.
  • The index has been constructed without any base year and reflects cumulative efforts of all stakeholders over the years towards financial inclusion

Source:IE