The pillars determining financial inclusion among SMEs in Egypt : service awareness, access and usage metrics and macroeconomic policies

Financial inclusion remains to be one of the trending topics and keypriorities considered by developing countries towards building up a resilient financialsector and pursuing economic growth. Accordingly, this paper aims at tackling thepillars of financial inclusion for SMEs introduces a number of pillars that determine thefinancial inclusion for SMEs' and they include; supply side, demand side pillars and themacroeconomic risks and demographic factors.Design/methodology/approach: The paper's methodology included the collection ofnovel data derived from a questionnaire directed to the banking community dealingwith SMEs' in Egypt and analysis of the dataset relied on descriptive and inferentialstatistics using econometric estimation; Principal Component Analysis (PCA) andLogistic Regression.Findings: The PCA results indicated the interaction between variables driven fromthe three main pillars: The first pillar pointed to the accessibility of SMEs' to the bankingservices through an integrated marketing campaign. The second pillar discussed theusage of banking services. The third pillar, assessed macroeconomic risks pertinent toSMEs'. The three pillars caused a 86.6% variability on the level of financial inclusion forSMEs' in Egypt.Originality: This paper gives insights into the Financial inclusion in the Egyptianenvironment for SMEs’ in banks. The paper would be an addition for filling the gap inthe literature investigating the new 3 pillars of financial inclusion within the SMEs’ thatcould be used in the banking sector nationally and internationally