Financial Inclusion in East Asia and Pacific

Financial inclusion in East Asia and the Pacific is the highest in the world (excluding high-income economies), with 83% of adults owning a financial account, according to the Global Findex Database 2025. This high level of account ownership is largely due to China’s huge economy, where 89% of adults have accounts, masking significant regional variation.  Account ownership in other countries of the region ranges from 38% in Lao PDR and 39% in Cambodia, to 92% in Thailand and 98% in Mongolia. The region as a whole has seen slow but steady growth over the past decade, as the rate of account ownership has risen from 69% in 2014 to its current rate of 83%. 

East Asia and the Pacific also boasts the highest level of digital payment usage in the world, with 80% of adults having made or received some kind of digital payment in the past year. Again, much of this usage is driven by China, as well as a couple other countries with high rates of digital payments, including Thailand, Malaysia and Mongolia. Elsewhere, such as in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Indonesia and the Philippines, rates are much lower, ranging from 27% to 43%.

Gender gap in financial inclusion

Remarkably, the gender gap in East Asia and the Pacific, which was already one of the world’s lowest at 4 percentage points in 2021, has reversed itself and now women are slightly more likely than men to own a financial account (83.5% vs 83.2%). For digital payments, the gender gap has completely closed, with both women and men reporting the same levels of usage. These figures put the region at the forefront of gender equity in terms of financial inclusion, with the world’s lowest gender gap among low and middle-income countries. 

However, in some countries the numbers paint a different, and more unusual, picture, with men at a more significant disadvantage. In the Philippines, the gender gap is 14 percentage points in favor of women, and in Lao PDR, 12 percentage points in favor of women. This phenomenon could be a result of migration patterns and remittance dynamics in which women receive transfers and manage household finances, social transfer programs targeted at women and decades of microfinance and savings group initiatives that focus on women. To learn more about how the financial inclusion sector is working towards women’s economic empowerment, join FinEquity, a community of practice to empower women through financial inclusion, convened by CGAP.

Resilience

One in four adults (25%) in East Asia and the Pacific experienced a natural disaster or extreme weather event in the past three years. 11% lost income and 10% lost property due to environmental disasters, underscoring the climate vulnerability faced by low-income communities in the region. Despite high levels of account ownership, the ability of households to withstand economic shocks remains limited. When asked how long their household could cover expenses after losing its main income source, only 44% of respondents said they could manage for more than two months. However, while this figure may seem low, it is the highest among other world regions for low- and middle-income countries. 

These figures show that there is still a long way to go in understanding and leveraging financial services such as credit, savings, insurance, and social protection to build resilience across the region and globally. To explore the link between access to financial services and climate resilience, refer to CGAP’s Impact Pathfinder, which synthesizes decades of research on this topic.