Financial Exclusion and Inclusive Finance

Inclusive finance is intended to address the barriers posed by financial exclusion to economic development. Therefore, an effective inclusive financial system must be designed to address financial exclusion rather than to provide long-term policy subsidies for financial relief. Financial exclusion in China has causes in economic development strategy, financial institutional arrangement, financial market structure, dominance of social relations, and constraints of risk evaluation. Eliminating financial exclusion and increasing financial inclusion essentially requires that our financial system be equipped with those functions through policy adjustment, institutional innovation and improvement of market rules. Existing bottlenecks of financial risk management should be eliminated to provide fair opportunities of financing for projects that contribute to social development with limited deviations from traditional credit costs. Inclusive finance is sometimes confused with policy subsidies, financial assistance and poverty relief loans, which cannot reflect efficiency, fairness and inclusion as the essential attributes of inclusive finance. The existing financial system must be adjusted to enhance risk management performance and advance financial market stratification and competition by creating fair and efficient legal and credit systems.