Scaling up note: Inclusive Rural Financial Services

With almost four decades of engagement in more than 70 countries and more than US$1.1 billion invested in rural finance (RF) initiatives, IFAD has rich and multifaceted experience, a global network of partners working at the frontier of innovation and hundreds of different types of providers addressing the financial needs of poor rural households as their clients. Most of the 3 billion people in rural areas still live on less than US$2 a day. Challenges such as economic shocks, food shortages and climate change affect poor people disproportionately. Poor rural households are typically excluded from opportunities in the formal financial sector.

There is increasingly robust evidence that promoting access to inclusive rural financial services in a responsible manner has positive impacts, at the microeconomic level through improving household welfare and local economic activities and at the macroeconomic level as the degree of financial intermediation is positively correlated with growth.