The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has pledged to deepen financial inclusion in the Philippines to bring more Filipinos into the formal financial system. This commitment follows the release of a World Bank report showing a slight dip in financial account ownership in the country.
The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 report revealed that 50.2 percent of Filipinos aged 15 and above owned an account with banks or other microfinance institutions. This marks a marginal decrease from 51.4 percent reported in the previous World Bank study in 2021.
The BSP noted that while the 2024 Global Findex report shows a slight decline, this could be attributed to the easing of pandemic-related incentives that encouraged the use of transaction accounts.
Persistent challenges, such as connectivity gaps, low financial literacy, and trust issues, continue to hinder progress, the BSP said. However, it cited gains observed between 2021 and 2024, including increased use of mobile money accounts, a rise in formal savings and improved financial resilience, measured by the ability to access extra funds within 30 days.
These findings underscore the need to move beyond mere account ownership and concentrate on improving financial health, particularly for vulnerable sectors, the BSP said.
The World Bank report indicates that 51 percent of adults in the Philippines had financial accounts, with 47 percent of women and 34 percent of the poor holding accounts.
In contrast, 100 percent of the adult population in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Austria, Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark held financial accounts.
For women, access to accounts can foster financial independence and strengthen economic empowerment. The report cited that in the Philippines, women who utilized commitment savings products, which encouraged regular deposits into a personal bank account, saw an increase in their household decision-making power and shifted their spending towards household goods relevant to their needs, such as washing machines.
In many developing economies, the income gap in account ownership remains in double digits. For instance, in Kenya, where account ownership stands at 79 percent, wealthier adults are approximately 20 percentage points more likely than poor adults to have an account. In economies like Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia, where account ownership ranges from 45 percent to 66 percent, this gap exceeds 20 percentage points. In the Philippines and Turkey, despite significant growth in account ownership over the past decade, the income gap has remained stagnant at over 20 percentage points.
The age gap also varies across developing economies. In the West Bank and Gaza, older adults are more than twice as likely as younger adults to possess an account. In Algeria and Egypt, the age gap in account ownership is nearly 25 percentage points. While not as high, the age gap remains in double digits in Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. In other economies such as Peru and the Philippines, the age gap is about 15 percentage points, mirroring the global age gap.
In lower-middle-income economies like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines, about a quarter of adults received a private sector wage payment. The share of wage earners receiving payments directly into an account ranged from 17 percent in Laos to 41 percent in the Philippines.
Outside Sub-Saharan Africa, Thailand has the highest share of adults (67 percent) who sent or received domestic remittances. Around half of adults in Cambodia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Russia, and Venezuela engaged in similar activities. While account usage dominated such payments in Mongolia, Russia, and Thailand, money transfer services were more commonly used in Cambodia (71 percent). In the Philippines, both accounts and money transfer services were generally utilized for these payments.
Despite the general trend towards online payments, cash on delivery remains a common method for online purchases in some economies, including the Philippines. Here, 36 percent of adults bought something online, and three out of four online shoppers paid only in cash for their purchases. The proportion of online shoppers who paid both online and in cash was low across most surveyed economies, though it exceeded 10 percent in a few economies in East Asia and the Pacific, including Malaysia, and in Europe and Central Asia.
In 26 developing economies, over half of those who saved did so using alternative methods. In the Philippines, for example, 30 percent of adults (55 percent of savers) saved solely through other means, making it one of the economies with the highest share of adults engaging in such practices.
In Cambodia and the Philippines, about 20 percent of unbanked adults – or about 10 percent of all adults – received government transfer payments in cash. Notably, over 80 percent of unbanked individuals receiving such payments in these economies possess a mobile phone.
