Postal savings accounts benefit women, the poor, and rural people the most - a podcast by Asian Development Bank Institute

Putting savings to work is crucial for Asia’s developing economies. In developing Asia, however, access to credit, savings and payment services remains limited. In 2014, only 36 percent of adults in East Asia and the Pacific had formal savings accounts and only 11 percent had access to formal credit.

With more than 600,000 branches worldwide, post offices provide an alternative to rural people to access services that traditional financial institutions cannot provide. So developing postal savings may be good for increasing financial inclusion, reducing poverty and achieving higher economic growth.

Read the transcript
http://bit.ly/2uYep6O

Read the policy brief
https://www.adb.org/publications/innovating-financial-inclusion-postal-savings-system-revisited

Authors
Aladdin Rillo, ADBI senior economist https://www.adb.org/adbi/about/staff-profiles/aladdin-rillo
Jeffrey Miyamoto, former ADBI research associate

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