⇒ Recently, the Reserve Bank of India has introduced the Financial Inclusion Index. The Reserve Bank of India has constructed a composite Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) to capture the extent of financial inclusion across the country.
The annual FI-Index for the period ending March 2021 is 53.9 as against 43.4 for the period ending March 2017. The FI-Index will be published annually in July every year.
The index captures information on various aspects of financial inclusion in a single value ranging between 0 and 100, where 0 represents complete financial exclusion and 100 indicates full financial inclusion.
The FI-Index comprises of three broad parameters (with weights):
- Access (35%)
- Usage (45%)
- Quality (20%)
Each of these consisting of various dimensions, which are computed based on a number of indicators. The Index is responsive to ease of access, availability and usage of services, and quality of services, comprising in all 97 indicators.