How much is financial inclusion impacting the Sustainable Development Goals? According to Liz Larson at UNCDF and Daryl Collins at BFA, the answer to that question remains unclear. They explore a new measurement framework that aims to explore all potential and proven connections between financial services and the SDGs – while also helping to substantiate those impacts. 

The authors say that the problem is that we are looking at only a fragment of the overall picture when we focus on only one pathway between a financial tool and improvements in people’s lives. We need to lookfor a multitude of pathways simultaneously to assess the full range of life benefits that finance may provide to ultimate life benefits. Ultimately, they say they hope that their conceptual framework and methodology offers a way to envision the journey from usage of financial instruments to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and can show the pathways by which financial inclusion efforts are improving the lives of low-income people.