Abstract
The financial sector is experiencing an accelerated process of transformation shaped by fintechs, which opens an important window of opportunity to increase financial inclusion in emerging markets, such as Brazil, with high financial exclusion. Thus, this article investigates, through a Delphi approach involving fintech professionals, the potential of fintechs to enable financial inclusion in emerging markets, using Brazil as a proxy. The analysis carried out identified three domains related to fintechs that have the potential to impact financial inclusion: (i) fintechs can serve niches of people without a bank account in the traditional financial market, (ii) fintechs can reduce costs for clients through increased competition, and (iii) fintechs can offer financial services in remote locations, far from traditional financial institutions. Thus, with the objective of developing a public agenda of financial inclusion through fintechs, the article proposes four lines of public policies: (i) expansion and modernization of mobile and internet infrastructure, (ii) improvement of the population’s financial and digital education, (iii) implementation of a trustworthy environment for the fintech clients, and (iv) development and enforcement of an effective legal and regulatory framework for fintechs. These policies, if implemented, can benefit people excluded from the financial system around the world.
Highlights
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has impacted several business industries and created new ones, transforming old paradigms of competition, work, and employment
According to CGAP (Consultative Group to Assist the Poor), innovative services are being made possible by ICT in an increasingly accelerated way, a process that started with mobile network operators together with a large number of agents offering services related to mobile money (m-money) [4], and which culminated in the appearance of fintechs—financial organizations that use ICT to offer their financial products and services [5]
As the idea is to have a proxy of the importance of each cluster in fintechinduced financial inclusion, the influence loads of these drivers were kept the same for each impacted cluster since it would be very discretionary to divide the weight of these loads between the respectively associated clusters
Summary
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has impacted several business industries and created new ones, transforming old paradigms of competition, work, and employment. In an accelerated way, technological innovations have changed traditional sectors of the economy and the society in general [1,2,3]. Innovations brought about by fintechs have the potential to rethink the way companies in the financial market create and deliver their products and services [6], offering opportunities for entrepreneurs to promote inclusive growth [7,8]. ICT may have a significant impact on the financial inclusion of people and companies that have little or no access to the traditional banking sector [10].
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