A report released by the Financial Access Initiative in October 2009 points out that 2.5 billion people or half of the world's adult population is unbanked. This means that they do not use formal or semi-formal financial institutions.

 It also shows that socio-economic and demographic factors are not the only determinants of financial inclusion. For example, countries such as India have far wider usage of formal financial services despite the fact that large numbers of its population reside in rural areas.

 Some key points: