Developing countries have identified access to affordable financial services such as credit, insurance and secure savings as critical to economic growth. Intent on boosting its peoples’ wealth by 2020, Malaysia is among the leaders in devising ways to bring its population into the formal financial system.
Some 2.5 billion adults globally have no access to financial services, according to the World Bank. These people often depend on informal money lenders where interest rates can be punitive, but which are quick and convenient to access.
Formal services, in contrast, may be geographically or technologically inaccessible, and require a swathe of identification documents not easily available to...
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