ACCI Conference 2024

To manage their financial well-being, consumers need access to a variety of financial products and services for meeting their saving, spending, and investment needs. Given its importance to support a variety of household financial functions, individuals’ access to financial products and services, or “financial access,” has been of growing interest in practice and research. This study uses the systematic conceptual review method and grounded theory to create financial access concepts, a definition, domains, and items that emerge from the literature. The definition reads, “An individual who financial access (i.e., encounters no intrinsic or external barriers) has freely chosen to utilize available, affordable, appropriate, convenient, beneficial, reliable, and secure household financial-related products, services, practices, and policies provided by formal financial institutions and governments that contributes to their financial and economic well-being.” The identified domains are a) Mainstream Financial Products and Services; b) Institutional Practices of Available Mainstream Financial Service Providers; c) Individual Resources and Intrinsic Qualities and Abilities; d) Individual Financial Action and Perceptions; and e) Financial Products or Services Utilized by Social Programs to Provide Benefits. Results suggest the need to broaden the focus of financial access and well-being policies and practices beyond ownership of financial products and services.

Author(s): Julie Birkenmaier, Jin Huang