In more than 130 years, the cooperative banks and rural banks, have become a best practice, widespread in all the Italian regions so as to become, through Federcasse, a federal system included among the 130 European banks, referents ECB. A model that today has about 400 local banks and that,...

This chapter provides a background on financial inclusion and examines the progress and trends across different indicators of financial inclusion and different macro and income regions. The data show positive growth in different indicators of financial inclusion over recent years; however, the...