Speeding Financial Inclusion by Sameer Kochhar is based on the first ever nationwide multi-stakeholder study entitled ‘National Study on Speeding Financial Inclusion’ which was undertaken by the Skoch Development Foundation. Apart from giving recommendations in the form of a roadmap to speed up the process of financial inclusion, the study has also sought to determine the viability and cost-effectiveness of the Business Correspondent (BC) model and has identified several options to make the model viable.
The author has defined financial inclusion as ‘not only providing accessibility of the entire range of financial products and services, it must also be appropriate, fair and transparent’ (p. 19). He writes, ‘Financial inclusion offers incremental and complementary solutions to tackle poverty, to promote inclusive development and to address the MDGs.’