Kenya maintains 86pc global  lead  in inclusive financial services

Kenya has been ranked number one in inclusive financial services by the Brookings Institution’s 2017 Financial and Digital Inclusion Project with an overall score 86 percent compared to 2016 score of 84 percent.

With an overall rating of 86 percent, Kenya topped  the 2017 FDIP Scorecard for the third year in a row. “Driven by its robust commitment to advancing financial inclusion, widespread adoption of mobile money services among traditionally underserved groups, an increasingly broad range of mobile money services (including insurance and loan products), and an enabling regulatory environment for digital financial services,” part of the report read.

However, Kenya has been urged to enhance its digital infrastructure to mitigate network challenges at agent locations, along with network outages.

Further, to promote financial education and capability initiatives among underserved populations, including women, to broaden and deepen financial inclusion.

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The latest data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) on quality standards in Kenya’s telecommunications industry, Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom Kenya failed to meet the quality standards of voice services, with their overall performance for the year to June 2016 coming in at 50.0 percent, lower than 62.5 percent recorded in FY’2014/15, and the regulator’s requirement of an 80.0 percent score on indicators such as speech quality, completed calls, call success rate and drop rate.

In addition to Kenya, the other top-scoring countries were distributed across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa: Brazil and Mexico tied for second place, and Colombia, South Africa, and Uganda tied for third. Countries in Asia were also represented near the top of the scorecard, with the Philippines scoring only two percentage points behind Colombia, South Africa, and Uganda.  

The report themed, ‘Building a secure and inclusive global financial ecosystem’, evaluates access to and usage of affordable financial services by underserved people across 26 geographically, politically, and economically diverse countries.

It focused on: country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment, and adoption of selected traditional and digital financial services.

The 2017 report builds upon the first annual FDIP report, published in August 2015, and the second annual FDIP report, published in August 2016.