Financial inclusion: mapping the economic opportunity

For our seventh episode, we're delighted to be joined by Theodora Lau, author of "Beyond Good: How Technology is Leading a Purpose-driven revolution", for a discussion around the "S" in ESG; or: "financial inclusion". Many of the most successful digital banks in the world are about the economics of financial inclusion, such as WeBank and MYbank in China, Nubank in Brazil,  Digibank in India, Current and Chime in the US. Further, as fintech funding declines, financial inclusion continues to perform well, with investors pouring money into many markets where mobile penetration is high, but bank population low, especially LatAm, because financial inclusion is big business. Yet closer to home financial inclusion often takes the form of highly segmented new digital banks like Daylight, for the LGBT community, banks in the US for black Americans, or Hispanic communities, and even anti-woke banks. Most of these have already failed, but there’s still real opportunity for incumbent banks to cherry pick those most “killer” features which can unearth a whole new customer segment. Our conversation covers where those opportunities are most real (i.e. commercially), and where they are more likely about identity politics and virtue signalling.