Financial Inclusion Index: RBI
The Reserve Bank of India has released the Composite Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) for the year ended 31st March 2022.
- India’s Financial Inclusion Index has improved to 56.4 from 53.9 in the previous year 2021.
- The improvement has been seen across all its sub-indices (Access, Usage and Equality).
Financial Inclusion Index:
- It is a comprehensive index incorporating details of banking, investments, insurance, postal as well as the pension sector in consultation with the government and respective sectoral regulators.
- It was developed by the RBI in 2021, without any ‘base year’, and is published in July every year.
- Aim:
- To capture the extent of Financial Inclusion across the country.
- The FI-Index is responsive to ease of access, availability and usage of services and quality of services, consisting of 97 indicators.
- Parameters:
- It 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.
- It comprises three broad parameters (weights indicated in brackets) viz., Access (35%), Usage (45%), and Quality (20%) with each of these consisting of various dimensions, which are computed based on a number of indicators.
- The index is responsive to ease of access, availability and usage of services, and quality of services for all 97 indicators.