In Brief

Reach out and bank

Over the past five years, 700 million people became account holders at banks, other financial institutions, or mobile money service providers, and the number of unbanked individuals dropped 20 percent to 2 billion adults, states a 2014 report by the World Bank, Global Findex.

Between 2011 and 2014, the percentage of adults with an account increased from 51 percent to 62 percent. In particular, mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa are helping to rapidly expand and scale up access to financial services.

The report found that there is still more to be done to expand financial inclusion among women and the poorest households in developing economies. The gender gap in account ownership is not narrowing: by 2014 only 58 percent of women had an account, compared with 65 percent of men. Regionally, south Asia has the largest gender gap, at 18 percentage points.

Technology has helped to spur account usage and transform the way domestic payments are made. Some 355 million adults with an account in developing economies reported sending or receiving domestic remittances in cash or over the counter, including 35 million in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, 1.3 billion adults in developing economies with an account pay their trash, water, and electric bills in cash, and over half a billion adults with an account pay school fees in cash. Access to digital payments, through a mobile phone or point-of-sale terminal, offers more convenient and affordable payment options

Going boldly

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan are helping countries in Asia and the Pacific tap into the latest technologies, including satellite maps, to prepare for—and respond more effectively and quickly to—natural disasters.

A $2 million technical assistance grant from Japan will be used by the ADB to train government and community officials and local volunteers in Armenia, Bangladesh, Fiji, and the Philippines to use state-of-the-art space-based technology and other high-tech tools for disaster planning. These four countries will act as pilots for the potential wider adoption of these technologies across the region.

The use of space-based technology, including satellite-based systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), for disaster planning and response has been growing in recent years. But many developing economies lack the funds and expertise to adopt new technologies that can supplement their existing early-warning and disaster-monitoring...