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What is the Financial Access Survey (FAS)?

The Financial Access Survey (FAS), launched in 2009, is a supply-side dataset on access to and use of financial services aimed at supporting policymakers to measure and monitor financial inclusion and benchmark progress against peers.

The dataset covers 189 countries spanning more than 10 years and contains 121 time-series on financial access and use including mobile money and gender-disaggregated data on basic financial services. To facilitate meaningful comparison, the FAS also publishes 64 indicators that are normalized relative to the size of adult population, land area, and gross domestic product (GDP).

 Two FAS indicators, the number of ATMs per 100,000 adults and the number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults, have been adopted by the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Indicator Framework to monitor SDG Target 8.10., which aims at strengthening the capacity of domestic financial institutions to expand access to banking and financial services.

Nine FAS indicators have been endorsed as the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators. These include:

1.    Number of ATMs per 100,000 adults

2.    Number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults

3.    Number of mobile money transactions per 100,000 adults

4.    Number of deposit accounts at commercial banks per 1,000 adults

5.    A. Number of life insurance policy holders per 1,000 adults

     B. Number of non-life insurance policy holders per 1,000 adults

6.    Deposit accounts of SMEs at commercial bank (as % of non-financial corporations)

7.    Loan accounts of SMEs at commercial banks (as % of non-financial corporations)

8.    Number of registered mobile money agent outlets per 100,000 adults

9.    Number of loan accounts with commercial banks per 1,000 adults

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