Serving Refugee Populations: The Next Financial Inclusion Frontier: Guidelines for Financial Service Providers

By end 2015, an unprecedented 65 million people around the world had been forced from home. Among them were 21.3 million refugees, of whom 45% were in the productive age bracket and half were women. 1 Six in ten refugees have been living in protracted displacement situations for more than 10 years, and two-thirds have self-settled in urban areas. A large segment of these refugee populations appear to be as eligible for access to financial services as any other client segment, but financial service providers (FSPs) have largely overlooked refugees as a viable client segment. These guidelines seek to examine why refugee populations are financially excluded and how FSPs can successfully reach and serve this untapped financial market segment.