Editorial Board

A Refereed Monthly International Journal of Management

Measuring Economic Development through Financial Inclusion: A Systematic Review

Shanu Tyagi

Research scholar,

Department of management studies

JCBOSE UST, YMCA, Faridabad

E-mail: tshanu966@gmail.com

Dr. Neha Goyal

Assistant Professor

Department of management studies

JCBOSE UST, YMCA, Faridabad

Neha.garg200@gmail.com

Abstract

Financial inclusion (FI) means giving everyone—individuals and businesses alike—fair and affordable access to banking and financial services, no matter their income or size. FI is vital for building a robust and potent financial infrastructure that assist economic growth. The study aims to examine and highlight eminent authors, leading publishers and publishing trend in FI, determines relevant articles using the PRISMA flow chart, and conducts a meta-analysis to examine research trends and identify research gaps, providing comprehensive insights into the domain. In methodology, a qualitative and quantitative study with a SLR (systematic literature review) analysis was performed. The PRISMA model is applied to thoroughly assess the effect of FI on financial development and growth. It is initiated by extracting 984 papers from Scopus and WOS database, reducing it to a smaller number for final analysis. The study extracts the papers and analyses, through meta-analysis. According to findings, 13 keywords/variables are identified through cluster analysis and grouped into red, blue, and green clusters, highlighting potential research gaps. The study emphasizes the crucially of economic inclusion as a popular research topic, demonstrated by the increasing number of publications in recent years. The results provide significant revelations for analysts, providing a blueprint for in-depth examination in the field of FI research. This research enhances scholarly comprehension within the specified discipline.

Keywords: Financial inclusion, Economic Development, Economic growth, Systematic Literature Review, Meta- Analysis

Introduction:

Financial inclusion means giving all people, even those with limited income or savings, accessible basic banking and financial offerings so they can fully participate in the economy. It aims to help low-income groups manage money wisely and gain financial literacy, while fintech and digital payments are making inclusion simpler than ever.

Reviewing existing literature is vital in any field, as it maps current knowledge and highlights gaps that guide future research. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) stands apart from traditional narrative reviews by following a clear, replicable, and transparent process. It gathers all relevant studies that meet set criteria to address a specific research question, using precise methods to reduce bias in searching, selecting, evaluating, and summarizing data. When carried out carefully, an SLR offers dependable insights that support sound decisions and further scientific work. A meta-analysis goes a step further, applying statistical tools to combine data from multiple studies, yielding sharper and more accurate conclusions.

In conclusion, the development of technology and digitalization appears to have no discernible effect on Financial inclusion, neither good nor bad. According to the most recent study on financial ecologies and resilience, rather than being. When considered as individual category, the effect of this kind of development relies on the particular kind of service or product, the economic climate, and the traits of the person who experiences its effects. Therefore, digitization might be viewed as a component of all ecological systems (Fernández-Olit et al., 2020). The evidence indicates that, steady financial and marketing support for the economy in emerging economies has not been adequately pushed in terms of reducing poverty. Expanding farm production while keeping risks in check allows rural branches of commercial banks to earn solid returns (Williams et al., 2017). Although the consequences on women's empowerment seem to be positive, they are dependent on programed elements, which are frequently unconnected to the financial service, as well as cultural and regional context (Duvendack & Mader, 2020). A wider branch network, fewer obstacles to borrowing, and strong engagement from banks together foster FI and support economic growth by making financial services easier to reach (Bakar & Sulong, 2018). This study demonstrates that originally, path to savings accounts did not have an influence on economic development. It doesn't appear like having account access is sufficient. It should be followed by initiatives to encourage usage and to kick start a process of understanding the account's functions and advantages (V. K. Singh & Ghosh, 2021). This study suggests that financial inclusion and accessibility to the poor can help to eliminate poverty in India. Regarding the expansion of the financial sector, for a quickly expanding economy, this might have significant implications for inclusive growth (Sehrawat & Giri,2016). The quantitative effects of global financial inclusion initiatives are empirically measured in this study. The report also contends that sustained economic expansion will be mightier under strategies that prioritize financial inclusion in particular and financial sector reforms generally (Sethi & Acharya, 2018). The study highlights FI as a major driver of economic growth, suggesting that policymakers who prioritize financial-sector reforms can reap lasting development gains, particularly in emerging economies. To unlock this potential, governments and other decision-makers need to address the challenges that still restrict people’s connectivity to financial services (Sethi & Sethy, 2019) .This study used 2 techniques—FMOLS and DOLS—to calculate the long-run coefficient of the FI index, together with 2 carefully chosen controls—trade openness and school enrollment. The long-term impact of FI on Gross domestic product per capita is estimated at just 1%, suggesting that expanding FI initiatives would have a modest influence on economic growth within SAARC nations (D. Singh & Stakic, 2021). This study's result disclosed a favourable and considerable influence of bank unit count and credit C/R ratio on country Gross domestic products, but a negligible impact of ATM expansion on Indian GDP (Iqbal & Sami, 2017) .

This article's sections are organised into the following categories: Section 1 covers the introduction to Financial Inclusion. Section 2 contains the research objectives. Section 3 Outline the research methodology. Section 4 outline the outcomes and discussions. Section 5 summaries or synthesizes the outcomes, while Section 6 suggests new directions.

Research Objectives:

• To identify the most eminent authors, leading publishers and emerging publication trend of FI.
• Find out the most relevant Articles through the PRISMA flow chart in this domain.
• To examine the research trend and research gap through Meta-analysis.

Methodology:

Search strategy:

Keywords: (“Financial Inclusion” AND (“Economic growth” OR “Economic development”)).

Document types: articles

Languages: English.

Country: India

Fig.1 Inclusion & Exclusion criterion

Systematic research framework:

Fig.2 PRISMA flow chart

Meta-Analysis:

The statistical technique of "meta-analysis" is employed in research to aggregate and examine data from multiple distinct studies on research topic. It entails doing a thorough examination of the existing literature, identifying important research, collecting data, and combining the findings to reach reliable conclusions. Numerous crucial processes are often included in meta-analysis. Researchers first establish the research topic and the inclusion criteria when choosing studies. They next carry out a thorough literature search to find research that are relevant and meet the criteria. After data has been collected, statistical techniques are applied to aggregate effect sizes or results from many investigations. Lastly, the findings are interpreted, and conclusions are drawn based on the collective evidence.  

• Bottom of Form

Results & Discussions:

QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS: Qualitative analysis include the assessment and interpretation of categorical data, such as text data or observations, to understand underlying meanings, patterns, and themes. It aims to gain insights, explore perspectives, and generate rich, descriptive findings to answer research questions or explore phenomena in depth.

Table 1:  Overview of existing literatures

Quantitative Analysis:

Bibliometric Study:

We adopted VOS Viewer to depicted the bibliographic data and examined the link association between the various analytical units. We used a variety of analytical techniques in the current study, including coauthor ship and co-occurrence. VOS Viewer was selected for this research h because of its versatility to handle all file kinds and its capacity to generate a network diagram, bibliographic data, and text data. The file is utilized by the VOS Viewer for visualization purposes.CSV format, which includes the articles’ bibliographic data.

Publication Trends:

Fig.3 Article Publication per year

A research publication on the trend of FI in India shows that the country has made significant progress in this area over the past few years. The publication is started in the year of 2007 but the publication is not up to the mark. Since 2019 it has picked up and 2022 witnessed a highest publication. The publication highlights that the government’s efforts to support FI via various schemes, such as PMJD, have been successful in increasing the number of banks accounts.

A list of Authors and their related citation numbers are shown in the table. The number of times their published works have been cited by other scholars in scholarly journals is indicated by the citation count. With a total of 284 citations, Gabor D. and Brooks S. are at the top of the list, demonstrating their great influence and effect within their esteemed field of research. Usman M. Makhdum M.S.A., and Kousar R. closely follow with 230 citations, highlighting their contributions to the academic community. All these authors are contributed 11% of the total citation. This field of research has benefited greatly from the work of these writers.

Meta Analysis:

The statistical method of "meta-analysis" is employed in research to aggregate and examine data from multiple distinct studies on a specific research topic. It entails doing a thorough examination of the existing literature, identifying eminent research, collecting data, and combining the findings to reach reliable conclusions.  

Occurrence of terms:

Fig 4: Co-Occurrence of Author’s Keyword

From the database analysis, VOS Viewer discovered 1668 keywords, of which 16 have been selected with a minimum occurrence of 20 and 3 are excluded because they were not related to our research. Finally, this study includes 13 keywords for analysis or clustering. It shows three clusters representing the occurrence of terms based on the author’s keywords. Three groups are named: red, blue and green. The red cluster contains Country, Digital financial inclusion, Economic development, Effect, Evidence and Impact. The green cluster contains Development, Economic growth, Financial Development, Financial Inclusion, India and Role. The last cluster (blue) contains the Economy keyword. The thickness of the lines depicts the association among keywords and the density shows the number of occurrences. These keywords generate a research gap and future researchers can use these types of keywords. For example, we can analyse through this cluster that "Digital Financial Inclusion" and "India" have no relation, which means the research in these keywords or areas has not been done.

Scree plot:

Fig 5: Scree plot of Keywords

The keywords which are having more than 1 Eigen value are those words used more in the field and the words which are having less than 1 Eigen value are the future research gap. From the diagram we can understand that 7 keywords are having highest value. For the future study we can go to total variance test. So that we can create the clusters.

Table4: Variance explained

Rotated Component Matrix:

Table 5: Rotated Component Matrix

The provided data denotes a rotated component matrix arising from a Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. The matrix consists of 7 components/ clusters labelled from 1 to 7, and several variables (VAR00001 to VAR00013) are associated with each component/ clusters. Varimax rotation is a technique employed to clarify the explanation of the components by elevate the variance of the squared loadings contained each component/ cluster. The number in the matrix indicate the correlations among the variables and the rotated components. A elevated correlating value indicates a robust association among the variable and the cluster. The correlation is represented by numbers in the matrix, with blanks indicating that the variable does not have a significant association with the respective component/ cluster.

Table 6: Variables

Cluster 1 Terms: development, digital financial inclusion

Cluster 2 Terms: country, evidence, financial inclusion, role

Cluster 3 Terms: economic growth, economy

Cluster 4 Terms: economic development

Cluster 5 Terms: effect, India

Cluster 6 Terms: impact

Cluster 7 Terms: financial development

Through this analysis, we can frame a title for the further researcher through these keywords, as these are more cited keywords. The Title is "Impact of Digital Financial Inclusion in the Economic Development of India" by using 1, 4,5 and 6 clusters. Further researchers can use these variables to frame their titles.

Conclusion:

The publication concludes that these trends suggest that India is moving towards a more financially inclusive society.  Wiley, MDPI and Taylor & Francis Ltd stand out at top of the list with high citation counts, indicating substantial impact they had made in this domain. The top 10 publishers are contributed 59% to the research. Gabor D., Brooks S., Usman M., Makhdum M.S.A., and Kousar R. have significantly influenced their field of research, contributing 11% of the total citations and benefiting the academic community. Our study identifies 13 keywords clustered into red, blue, and green groups, revealing potential research gaps, such as the lack of exploration on the association among "Digital Financial Inclusion" and "India."  Utilizing 1, 4, 5, and 6 clusters derived from the analysis of highly cited keywords, researchers can leverage these variables to frame titles for further investigations. Overall, the findings indicate that FI is a popular research topic, as demonstrated by the increasing number of publications on the subject in recent years. The study has numerous consequences for researchers because the results can direct as a roadmap for future fresh research. In this regard, this research provides highly important information for academics seeking to expand their understanding in the field of Financial Inclusion research.

Future Research Directions:

This section describes the gaps discovered during the study.  They include the Scopus and WOS database in their Systematic Literature Review analysis. Future research could also draw on other databases to collect relevant data. The use of different keywords, a different time frame for the study, research materials other than the articles under consideration, or performance of the search in various databases could all have an impact on the outcomes. The contributions of academic researchers and experts in the field must be investigated in order to make theoretical and practical improvements. To detain the cognitive and postulated framework in the subject, researchers suggested theme-specific reading.

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