Performing a Quantile Regression to Explore the Financial Inclusion in Emerging Countries and Lessons African Countries Can Learn from Them

Financial inclusion is a concept that promotes the accessibility and admittance of people and small businesses to financial assistance such as credit, banking features, and insurance items. There is a significant poof that adequate financial services have advantageous gains for women, young people, clients, and underprivileged individuals. Efficient and sound expansion of financial inclusion in emerging countries is frequently upheld by adequate strategies, innovative reforms, and favorable regulations that ought to help small firms, poor and marginalized individuals, and empower communities. Various emerging countries are executing reforms to extend financial diffusion. For that reason, this study will explore the factors that promote financial inclusion in emerging countries and the lessons that African countries could learn from them. Thus, 13 emerging countries which are (India, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, and China) from the period of 2005 to 2020 were nominated. Additionally, to determine the elements that influence financial inclusion factors such as bank branches per 100 000 individuals, net income per capita, percentage of individuals using the internet, gross domestic product, total employment, inflation, and population density were selected. A simple OLS and quantile regression model were performed in different percentiles. Furthermore, the findings exposed that variables such as national income per individual, the increase in internet usage, and inflation regulations promote financial inclusion in emerging countries. Whereas, employment displayed a negative effect with the OLS model. However, it presented a positive influence after performing the quantile regression. This implies at a larger scale the employment rate does have a positive impact on the availability of bank branches. Finally, population density presented a neutral effect on the availability of bank branches while the GDP of emerging countries exhibited a negative impact on the availability of bank branches for individuals.