IslamicFinance.de

The Global Islamic Economy Summit, set for the 5-6 October, will heavily stress the importance of financial inclusion to the future of Islamic finance. Financial inclusion is an interesting subject because it has primarily been seen only from the perspective that Islamic finance is able to promote inclusiveness by offering a Shari’ah-compliant offering to people whose exclusion is driven by their reluctance or unwillingness to engage with the conventional financial sector. An infographic from the World Bank in 2013 highlighted the size of the unbanked population estimating it at 2.5 billion people (34 per cent of the global population). That means that while Muslims make up 22 per cent of the world’s population, they account for 46 per cent of the world’s unbanked.