Background
There is widespread agreement among stakeholders
in Kenya that there is a serious problem of
constrained access to financial services among
lower income and rural households and smaller
scale enterprise. Considerable efforts have
been devoted to addressing this problem which
impacts directly on the livelihoods of poorer
people and economic growth. Despite a consensus
that there is a constraint, no reliable data
has been available to indicate the extent of
the challenge faced and any means of measuring
progress made by government, the financial services
industry and development partners in addressing
it. Following a stakeholder workshop involving
players from across industry and government,
a public-private partnership, The Financial
Access Partnership (FAP) was formed to guide
the work on behalf of the sector. The FAP determined
the immediate priority to conduct a household
survey to establish levels of access to financial
services by Kenyans across the country.
FinAccess 2009 Survey
The results of the second national survey on
access to finance in Kenya, FinAccess 2009,
were released on 10th June 2009. These show
that Kenya has made considerable progress in
improving access over the two and a half years
since the last study which was undertaken in
2006.
Financial exclusion
– that is people without access to any
form of financial services – has fallen
from 38.4% to 32.7% of the population. In his
key-note speech at the launch of the results
on 10th June 2009, the Governor of the Central
Bank of Kenya, Professor Njuguna Ndungu, commented
that: “over the last five years Kenya’s
financial landscape has considerably changed.
The financial system is now offering a wide
range of financial services to more Kenyans
and to a wider geographical coverage than ever
before. FinAccess 2009 marks a major contribution
towards improving our understanding of the dynamics
of the changing financial landscape in Kenya."
Results
The results were launched on 10th June 2009.
A summary of the results as released can be
found
here.
Click
here to view/download speeches
and presentation made during the launch.
Accessing
the dataset
The top-line findings are available to all without
restriction. If you want to access the underlying
FinAccess 2006 and 2009 datasets the Financial
Access Partnership's policy
sets out how you can go about doing
this.
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