| Current level of financial supply in China has obvious different characteristics in urban and rural areas and for different groups.A variety of tiny subjects are still suffering the financial exclusion.Specifically,at the family level,the financial exclusion shows in two aspects,one is about the low financial coverage rate.Financial institutions provide a serious shortage of services for the poor and remote rural families,as well as the low-income urban families.The other is that these families are still provided with simple and low-level financial services.The current financial supply system and mode are difficult to meet the increasing diversity of financial needs from these families.In addition to the insufficient supply will of financial institutions,the above issue also lies in that these families have the serious problem of self-demand inhibition.Compared with developed countries,this problem is even more serious in developing countries.The emerging market economies are apparently deficient in the ability of creating financial assets(Caballero,2006).Vulnerable groups not only demand basic financial services like depositing,drawing,paying,cashing etc,but also expect more diversified and potential non-basic financial services.But these potential demands are usually stuck in self-repression because of high trade cost,poor information acquisition,lack of financial knowledge and so on.In reality,financial institutions did not realize to broadcast financial knowledge and non-basic financial service information to these vulnerable groups either.From the long term,it is not good to inspire their potential financial demands,add types of financial services and improve the level of the services for rural and low-income urban families.All around these issues,the governments and financial institutions conduct a series of institutional innovation,technological innovation and product innovation in policy-making and supply practice.In November 2013,the third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee passed "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues of Comprehensive Deepening Reform",formally proposed"Developing of Inclusive Finance",encouraging financial innovation,enriching financial market levels and products ".On the conference,the development of Inclusive Finance was firstly put forward as an important part of improving the financial market system.And it also pointed out the importance of enriching market products and levels in the process of financial inclusion.During the same period,people gradually noticed the role information and communication technology(ICT)and the internet financial innovation playing in easing up the financial exclusion of remote and rural areas.At the beginning of 2016,the Chinese State Council issued " Promote Inclusive Financial Development Plan(2016-2020)",further emphasizing the role of ICT in the construction of inclusive financial system,encouraging financial institutions to speed up replenishing E-Banks and self-service equipment to replace the fixed bank outlets.In July of the same year,in the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors,"Digital Inclusive Finance" was firstly mentioned.After that the G20 Hangzhou Summit issued "G20 Advanced Principles of Digital Inclusive Financial",encouraging financial institutions to reduce the cost of financial supply,raise supply efficiency,and promote financial innovation by ICT,so that the benefits of economic development can reach the widest range of people to finally achieve financial inclusion.In China,the inclusive financial level is comparatively not high.And the modern ICT brings new opportunities for inclusive financial level.Under this background,this paper attempts to study the following problems.First,will the level of ICT in different areas impact on the local financial coverage as the theoretical expectations?And what is its mechanism?Secondly,specific to the micro-family,the higher the level of ICT for families,will the probability be the greater when their potential financial needs are transformed into actual financial services?What kind of impact the ICT will produce on the types of financial services?Finally,is there a difference between the impacts what ICT brings to the basic and non-basic financial services?And how much can the information technology of the demand subject contribute to the difference?Around the above problems,this paper analyzes the impact of information and communication technology on financial inclusion through theoretical analysis and empirical test.This paper is divided into seven chapters,the main contents and conclusions are as follows.Part one:the theoretical mechanism of the impact that information and communication technology(ICT)produces on financial inclusionThis part introduces the inclusive finance concept from two aspects.One is to extend the financial coverage,so that the people living where the financial service was originally unavailable can also get financial services.Then the expanding of financial supply benefits can be realized.The second is that at the micro-family level,the financial service categories should be enriched and the level of financial service should be improved.Thus the potential and diversified financial demands could be fully stimulated for minor subjects.Considering the change trend of the close combination of ICT and financial supply in more areas,this part theoretically analyzes the mechanism of the impact that ICT produces on financial inclusion.The result shows:First,the development of ICT can help financial institutions create more financial supply modes.ICT has two effects on the supply side.One is reducing the traditional bank outlets' funds by supply innovation save fixed cost for institutions.Another is reducing the variable cost,like labor by improving the efficiency and optimizing technique.These effects make the marginal cost curve of services in remote and rural areas for micro subjects no longer consistent with the social marginal cost curve.It increases the optimal supply of financial institutions and makes it close to the optimal supply of social expectations.As a result,it overcomes the positive externalities problem in the process of traditional financial supply and improves the breadth of financial coverage.Second,the improvement of the level of information communication technology of the family is helpful to broaden the channels of obtaining information.Due to the existence of the Internet,there are more and more new financial products and services,which are easy to operate and more vulnerable to the acceptance of vulnerable groups.When the traditional financial services transferred from the line to the line,with the characteristics of easy replication of information and communication technology is easier to form a scale effect,greatly reducing the threshold for access to financial services.The improvement of the family's own information and communication technology helps to increase the types of family financial services,and improve the level of financial services.In addition,taking into account the rural households,urban low-income families by the original transaction cost,restricting access to information and other aspects of the financial needs of the level of inhibition is higher,so the effect information technology on these vulnerable groups is more significant.Part two:The impact that information and communication technology produces on financial coverageThis part points out that the first to improve the inclusive finance lies in breadth of financial coverage.The core of this stage is to realize the equality on the chances of accessing to basic financial products and services for a variety of subjects in different areas.Based on the ICT's impact mechanism on regional financial coverage,this paper makes use of survey data to examine above possible effects.Research shows that the impact which the key variable of measuring the regional ICT level produces on the financial coverage is significantly positive at the level of 1%.It proves that the development of ICT contributes to improving the regional financial coverage and expanding the benefits of financial service.The groups who did not have access to financial services make it now.Keeping the other elements under control,the empirical study in this part proves the positive role ICT playing for improving the financial coverage.Part three:The impact that information and communication technology produces on the types and levels of micro-family finance.This part switches to family level.According to hierarchy of needs theory,based on the relations between the financial types that family can get in the life cycle and the cost,by building the theory model of the family ICT level,types of financial services received from various channels and the relationship between cost and potential demands,it analyzes the ICT's influence mechanism on family financial services categories.Research shows that through broadening the channels of financial supply,increasing access to information and improving the screening efficiency of financial services information for families,the modern ICT reduces transaction costs for family accessing to financial services,alleviates the self-inhibition of potential financial needs,and thereby stimulates their potential and diversified financial needs.Based on this,this part empirically tests with the 2013 China Household Finance Survey(CHFS)data.The result displays that,at the micro household level,the role ICT playing in the process financial inclusion is mainly reflected in boosting the increase of types of financial products and services that families can get,and stimulating the potential demands on more types of non-basic financial products and services.Part four:A case study of ICT promoting financial inclusionThe previous analysis mentioned multiple types of financial products and services created by the combination of ICT and financial supply.As a matter of fact,the innovation is always in progress for the traditional financial institutions.They keep taking advantages of ICT to expand the service boundary and improve the regional financial coverage.One of such important innovation is the pilot Branchless Banking in different regions.Based on the scientific definition of Branchless Banking,this part discusses the reasons for there being the discrepancy of Branchless Banking between China and other developing countries,through investigating the domestic Branchless Banking practice and comparing the features and limits between different modes.The study shows:Firstly,in the mode led by foreign operators,many financial institutions are included in one uniform supply ecosystem.Positive externalities are internalized.While meanwhile,there exist risks of lax controls,relatively single business types and homogeneity competition between financial institutions.But in the mode led by financial institutions,given that the government and Financial Regulators provide great support and promote strongly,the banking system participates positively,the level of risk controls is relatively higher,and financial services provided by agents almost covers most of the banking business,the development can be even better and the effect of financial inclusive also can be more outstanding.Secondly,the practice of domestic Branchless Banking is managed by banks,with fierce homogeneity competition between financial institutions and larger exclusivity.The more prudent regulation strategy and strict risk controls by banking financial institutions also make most of the domestic Branchless Banking practices hard to expand diversified financial services.The business type is relatively single.In the long run,with the continuous development of rural social economic and the diversified financial demands from rural residents,such kind of Branchless Banking might be difficult to adapt to new changes.It will be the necessary trend and choice that following the Branchless Banking practice in the mode led by foreign banks to expand financial services types of domestic Branchless Banking.At last,combining with the field research data,this part analyzes rural family's willingness to accept Branchless Banking.It discovers that the Branchless Banking combined with ICT truly led to the promotion of non-cash settlement tools in rural areas and contributes greatly to the annual decrease of cash holdings by peasant household.But nearly half of rural residents expect to obtain financial knowledge education and more financial products through Branchless Banking,which shows rural family's potential demands of having more types of and more complicated financial services.Besides,it also just proves the previous analysis that financial inclusive process is not only to improve the financial coverage but also to increase the types and improve the level of financial service.In conclusion,this paper builds the theoretical analysis framework of the impact which ICT produces on financial inclusive,based on the view of family financial services acquisition,and starting from realistic background of the rapid growing of ICT,as well as its close combination with financial supply.And it empirically tests the impact effect of ICT on financial inclusive.The improvement of financial coverage on the supply level,the increasing types and higher levels of financial service acquisition in the micro-family level,on one hand,are conductive to developing issues on financial exclusion.On the basis of past research,this paper further concentrates on the financial coverage and the types and levels of financial services on the micro-family level.On the other hand,ICT affecting financial inclusive is turned into a empirical issue,which also proves the formation mechanism of insufficient financial supply on the other way round. |
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