FinDev Financial Inclusion Year in Review 2025

In 2025, new data from the World Bank’s Global Findex Database underscored an ongoing global trend in financial inclusion: while access to financial services has expanded significantly, financial resilience remains limited for many people. According to the latest Findex, 75% of adults in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) now have a financial account, up 20 percentage points from a decade ago. However, only 34% would be able to cover expenses for more than two months if they were to lose their primary source of income. 

Shifting the focus to outcomes

These findings helped reinforce a shift towards a greater focus on outcomes, a direction CGAP advanced with the launch of the Impact Pathfinder early this year. The Pathfinder has clarified the evidence on how financial services contribute to development outcomes, including women’s economic empowerment, resilience, job creation and entrepreneurship. 

As a part of this shift, the year also saw increased attention to financial health. In early 2025, the GPFI and OECD released a G20 Policy Note on Financial Well-Being, offering a working definition and preliminary roadmap for measurement that moves beyond access to consider how well people manage their financial lives. Queen Máxima’s renewed mandate as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Financial Health added further visibility and momentum to this agenda. Throughout the year, CGAP spotlighted how financial health is being integrated into thinking about quality of inclusion and outcomes. Meanwhile, sector platforms such as the Center for Financial Inclusion articulated how financial health and well-being are becoming core to evolving inclusion strategies.

As resilience has grown in recognition as a key development outcome, the financial inclusion sector deepened work to help vulnerable populations build resilience. Climate resilience gained increasing attention in research and in practice, with further development of tools such as parametric (index-based) insurance and targeted recovery loans. However, global financing available for supporting climate resilience has not kept up with the need, as the adaptation finance gap continues to widen. In response to this funding shortfall, some organizations have put together climate resilience bonds to finance projects which support climate resilience for different segments.  

Continued innovation with AI and digital payments

Another key and growing trend for the financial inclusion sector is the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which has moved rapidly from experimentation to early-scale application in areas such as personalized financial advising, credit assessment, fraud detection, and supervisory technology. The sector spent much of the year learning about what AI can do, as well as how to govern it responsibly, with important questions raised for policymakers around transparency, data protection, and consumer protection. 

32 out of 42 financial authorities surveyed by the Bank of International Settlements reported that they are already either experimenting with, developing or using gen AI applications for supervision in their countries. CGAP identified at least 50 jurisdictions which have released AI-specific guidelines for financial institutions. Supervisors in Brazil, India, Malaysia, Singapore, the European Union and the UK included monitoring of AI usage in financial services and developing guidance on it as regulatory priorities in 2025.

Digital payments continued evolving, particularly around instant payment systems and digital public infrastructure (DPI). The reach and capabilities of instant payment systems expanded in countries such as Brazil, Ghana, India and Indonesia within broader DPI frameworks that integrate digital ID, data governance, and interoperable payment rails. Several countries advanced discussions on cross-border instant payments, including India–Singapore and the ASEAN countries. Despite these developments, barriers such as limited connectivity, low levels of digital literacy and fragmented payment ecosystems continued to affect usage.

Progress on the gender gap, with more work to be done

While the gender gap in financial access has now narrowed to only 5 percentage points in LMICs, according to the Global Findex Database 2025, there are still over 20 countries with gender gaps of over 20 points, and women are still 13 percentage points less likely than men to make digital payments. Accordingly, gender remained a central pillar of the financial inclusion agenda in 2025, led by FinEquity, the community of practice on women’s financial inclusion, which is convened by CGAP. Throughout the year, FinEquity convened practitioners and policymakers to share new research and country experiences, highlighting examples of gender-intentional design and the links between women’s financial inclusion, enterprise growth, resilience and broader economic participation. 

However, funding constraints affected momentum, as some major donors reconsidered or scaled back gender-related aid commitments as part of broader fiscal adjustments. In this context, FinEquity’s convening role has become even more critical, uniting practitioners, policymakers and funders to foster collaboration, collective learning and alignment around shared priorities.  

Funding challenges across sectors

Funding trends shaped how the sector prioritized issues across the board, as global official development assistance (ODA) continued to be under considerable strain in 2025. After falling 7% in 2024, ODA was projected to decline again in 2025 by about 9 to 17%, according to OECD figures. The cuts in international aid have forced some FSPs to discontinue projects that required technical assistance or subsidy, especially those around health, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), refugees and gender equality. 

These pressures increased emphasis on value-for-money, coordination, and evidence-based decision-making, reinforcing interest in tools such as CGAP’s Impact Pathfinder that help identify where limited resources are most likely to improve outcomes. 

A call to continue sharing knowledge

From a deepened focus on financial health and resilience, to rapid progress in AI experimentation, to growing funding constraints, the trends we saw this year paint a picture of both progress and increasingly complex challenges. Working in community is key for addressing these challenges, and over the course of the past year, FinDev Gateway was present at various sector gatherings where we tracked and reported on how these topics were discussed. 

As a media partner for Inclusive Finance 25 (formerly European Microfinance Week), hosted by e-MFP, and African Inclusive Finance Week (SAM), hosted by ADA, we spoke with participants about the challenges they are grappling with and opportunities they see emerging for the sector. This video captures some of their reflections on where progress is happening and how financial inclusion must continue evolving to deliver better outcomes for people and their businesses. Stay tuned for more videos with insights from participants.

As we close the year, we invite you to keep sharing your work on FinDev Gateway. FinDev helps to make knowledge from across the sector visible, accessible and useful – whether it comes from research, policy, implementation or experience. By sharing lessons, insights and evidence on FinDev, you help others learn from what works, what doesn’t, and what the sector needs to pay closer attention to next.   

Before you go! Here are some editor's picks for further reading

We know most people don't have enough time to read everything they'd like to during the year, so we've picked out just a few of the year's key blogs and publications to help you catch up with what's happening in the financial inclusion sector: