Challenges to Financial Inclusion in India

Focusing on the institutional challenges to financial inclusion in Andhra Pradesh, this paper argues that it is the inability of formal financial institutions to meet the specific needs of the poor that has enabled informal service providers to fill the vacuum. Without a paradigm shift, especially on the part of banks, financial inclusion is bound to fall short of expectations. It proposes that the banking sector should look at efforts to expand inclusion not as a capital cost or as a charitable expense, but as a long-term investment in the future. The soundness of such an investment is borne out in the success of individual business correspondents in some districts of the state.