ABSTRACT
The financial services sector in Zimbabwe offers a wide range of products and services that include insurance, banking and microfinancing. Zimbabwe also boasts of a diversified payment system, the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, which facilitates the settlement of transactions of substantial value as well as infrastructure that is designed to optimally cater for lesser value payments such as mobile money platforms. Despite the availability of these financial services, Zimbabwe's formal financial sector is plagued with a low uptake from the population due to demand barriers such as low and irregular incomes. The low uptake of formal financial services by poor and marginalised people in Zimbabwe is also compounded by supply induced barriers such as profit motives by financial institutions that result in financial services becoming expensive to access. Poor and marginalised people also struggle to comply with the minimum account opening or loan requirements needed by financial institutions in the formal financial sector. Furthermore, regulatory barriers such as rigid banking laws have also contributed to the low uptake of formal financial services in Zimbabwe. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the policies and statutory regulations relating to the promotion of financial inclusion in Zimbabwe. Most importantly, the 2016–2020 national financial inclusion strategy (NFIS) was launched by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) in March 2016. Therefore, it is also worth analysing the progress made and the challenges faced by the government of Zimbabwe towards achieving financial inclusion during the stated period.
