Making Access Possible (MAP) is a multi-country initiative to support financial inclusion through a process of evidence-based analysis feeding into a financial inclusion roadmap jointly implemented by a range of local stakeholders.

MAP was initiated by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and developed in partnership with FinMark Trust and the Centre for Financial Regulation and Inclusion (Cenfri). In each country, MAP brings together a broad range of stakeholders from within government, the private sector and the donor community to create a set of practical actions aimed at extending financial inclusion tailored to that country.

The volumes in the MAP Global Insights series consolidate and synthesize the learnings from the MAP programme across MAP programme countries.

Note 1: Financial inclusion through an inclusive growth lens

The interconnected global world of our times means that money and the flow of money are increasingly connected across geographies, people and systems – and the basis for making these connections work needs to be reconfigured. For financial inclusion, the UN’s call for an integrated, systems approach to complex development challenges is a call for better understanding the money flows at the most micro level of communities and societies and, in the process, better understanding the potential to include those currently outside of the financing system within the scope of the national financing system at the very least – and where possible of the global financing system.

Note 2: Next-generation segmentation

While Note 1 looks at the potential for financial inclusion that can allow people to more fully participate in economic growth at a country level, this note, by turning its attention to the economic activity already happening at ground level, homes in on the potential for low-income segments of the population to actively contribute to and benefit from economic growth.

Note 3: The millions and billions...and the 1%

The MAP MSME methodology, informed by the need for a longer-term productivity and growth emphasis, argues for a more active role by country governments in supporting the small pool of SMEs with the potential to grow and become engines of the real economy, creating better linkages with the larger financing system.

Note 4: Inclusive data for a world that counts: Enabling multisectoral collaboration for challenging exclusion

Inclusive data highlights how a lack of access to resources – particularly basic services and infrastructure, education and healthcare – preserves the status quo of inequality and exclusion, making it harder for vulnerable groups to access opportunities and chart pathways out of poverty.

Note 5: Cracking the code: Opening up pathways out of poverty.

In pointing out that peoples’ economic needs, and how they go about meeting them, reflect their personal values in the wider context of social and societal values, the note argues the role of inclusive financial services in increasing economic inclusion (especially of those in the informal sector of the real economy) and social mobility.