Financial Inclusion and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Abstract

This chapter's objectives are to investigate what financial inclusion means and to outline the context in which the Fourth Industrial Revolution's technologies will affect it. Financial inclusion is defined variably in the literature, as this chapter points out. The chapter also emphasizes the fact that there are numerous theories of financial inclusion, including the beneficiary theories, the delivery theories, and the funding theories. The chapter also finds that some barriers to financial inclusion are being heavily addressed because of the technologies powering the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is changing the financial industry. It was pointed out that information asymmetry is one of the main obstacles to financial inclusion since it makes it exceedingly difficult for other groups of individuals to get a line of credit, which greatly increases financial exclusion. However, the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are changing this by allowing excluded persons to be financially included through signalling, screening, information exchange, and digital identity construction, among other things. Keywords Financial Inclusion Fourth Industrial Revolution