During the G20 discussions last year, global attention was drawn to the significant progress in financial inclusion achieved through the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), particularly in enabling women’s access to bank accounts via direct benefit transfers. As of July 2024, more than 290 million women have become PMJDY bank account holders.
In March this year, the RBI’s Financial Inclusion Index increased to 64.2 from 60.1 the previous year, indicating improved access and usage. To sustain this momentum, the Union Budget 2024 presents a critical opportunity to introduce innovative measures aimed at expanding usage and enhancing the quality and diversity of financial products available to millions of Indian women.
The current administration is placing high importance on advancing women’s economic empowerment, recognizing its comprehensive and interconnected nature. Efforts are actively underway to enhance the economic resources, participation, and influence of low-income women and their households by improving their access to financial services, knowledge, and markets.
The upcoming 2024 Union Budget is expected to strongly emphasize ‘Naari Shakti’, particularly through initiatives aimed at financial inclusion.
This will involve leveraging India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and fostering inter-ministerial collaboration to integrate women who are on the fringes of financial systems into formal and digital financial services.
We expect initiatives to stimulate extensive collaborations between public and private sectors to drive innovation on a large scale.
This includes establishing a significant number of women agents, investing in enhancing financial and digital skills, and utilizing gender-specific data to inform strategic decision-making.
At the heart of this strategy lies a network of financial agents, predominantly women, dedicated to delivering accessible and personalized financial services in underserved regions.
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For The Women Welfare
This transformative approach empowers these women as advocates of digital and financial literacy, building trust and familiarity within communities that have historically been overlooked. Gender-sensitive training for these agents will enable them to provide tailored customer education, particularly aimed at promoting essential financial security products like insurance.
Budgetary measures might include support such as soft loans or seed capital specifically targeted at women agents establishing their banking businesses. Furthermore, we might see potential reductions in GST rates for agents and investments in capacity building through financial training institutes.
Jan Samridhi
With a strong emphasis on financial inclusion, advancements in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) have the potential to integrate various economic empowerment initiatives into a unified program.
This initiative would bring together transformative and embedded financial services, offering a comprehensive suite of products under one framework.
This could include Jan Dhan, Jan Suraksha, accessible collateral-free credit, micro-insurance, digital payments, and other services tailored to women’s financial needs throughout their lifecycle.
This holistic approach, potentially named Jan Samriddhi, has the potential to revolutionize financial health by aligning inter-ministerial programs and missions.
Financial Resilience
Building on this initiative, we expect budget allocations aimed at achieving universal insurance coverage by 2047.
To ensure that everyone has access to affordable and adequate insurance, there will be efforts to establish a new platform for rural micro-insurance, modeled after regional rural banks and public sector banks. This will involve differential costing and taxation to ensure profitability.
In order to expand Bima Sugam inclusively, there will likely be incentives for the insure-tech industry to innovate and foster public-private partnerships to increase coverage. Additionally, we may see supportive policies to enhance the recruitment and operations of women as insurance agents.
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