
Financial Inclusion: A Systematic Literature Review And Future Research Directions
Financial inclusion is the process of ensuring that individuals, especially poor people have access to basic financial services in the formal financial sector. Since it is regarded as a major strategy used to achieve the United Nation’s sustainable development goals and it helps improving the social inclusion level, this topic has attracted very much attention by the theorists and practitioners globally. Though the retrospective literature is replete with empirical evidences on this topic, consolidation of those evidences is a demanded one now. Hence, this paper makes a systematic review of the literature on financial inclusion, and identifies some emerging themes around this topic. Also, we emphasize the degree of financial inclusion and how financial inclusion can transmit systemic risk to the formal financial sector. The key findings of our review include the significant role of financial status, financial awareness, economic status, financial regulations, etc., of the individual and the society on financial inclusion. Accordingly, we make certain propositions and articulate agenda for future research.
KEYWORDS: Economic Status, Emerging Themes, Financial inclusion, literature review, financial sector.