Improving financial inclusion is a key objective of CIB’s African expansion – a strategy that is already gaining momentum outside Egypt.
The World Bank Group’s most recent global findex database found that bank account ownership in Egypt increased significantly between 2011 and 2017. However, wealthier adults are still twice as likely as poorer ones to have an account and the share of adults who reported having saved formally over the previous 12 months was just 5%, with family and friends the largest source of borrowed funds.
The World Bank estimates that digitizing private sector wage payments could reduce the number of unbanked adults in Egypt by up to a fifth. CIB agrees that digital solutions are the key to reaching the unbanked and underbanked segments of the Egyptian population and they form a vital element of its strategy for targeting the unbanked and underbanked segments of population.