Fun with Findex (2025)

The good news

Access is nearly won: % of adults now have an account.

Up from % in 2011; Kenya went from % to %. The question is what counting accounts stops telling us once almost everyone has one.

Account ownership, 2011-2024. World and Kenya. Source: World Bank Global Findex 2025 (survey year 2024).

The bad news

Women are more financially fragile than men in of economies.

Women are more likely to say they could not raise emergency funds within 30 days -- by about points on average, and by points in Pakistan and in Nigeria.

Cannot raise emergency funds in 30 days -- women (red) versus men (navy), ten widest gaps. Source: Global Findex 2025.

The surprise

The gap is as wide in rich economies as in poor ones.

Income here means country income -- GDP per person at purchasing-power parity -- not self-reported personal income. It does not move the gap: across economies the fitted line is flat, and once account access is controlled for, income comes out irrelevant (p=).

The gap does not trend with income. Each dot is an economy; navy diamonds are GDP-quartile averages; the dashed line is the fitted relationship (p= alone, p= with the account-access control). Source: Global Findex 2025; World Bank GDP (PPP).

The bigger surprise

Even where accounts are equal, women are more fragile.

Account access is the other suspect. Eswatini and South Africa are the cleanest cases -- men and women hold accounts at essentially the same rate, and women are still 8 to 10 points more likely to be unable to raise emergency money.

Equal accounts, unequal resilience. Gender gap in account ownership versus gender gap in the ability to raise emergency funds, percentage points. Source: Global Findex 2025.

What I take from it

The measure that comes next looks like usable inclusion -- reach, resilience, real activity.

The account gender gap was the one the field could close, and it largely has; this gap did not move with it.

The public-use microdata says more. Within the same country, the unused account keeps tracing the same person -- offline, poorer, less educated, female (+ points for women). Stack those four traits and dormancy climbs from % of holders with none of them to % with all four, roughly times the risk. I have a longer set of notes on that, and on two related gaps, if useful.

Kenya may be the sharpest example: near-universal accounts in Findex, yet the 2024 FinAccess survey put the share of adults who are financially healthy at fewer than one in five.