CURRENT CONTEXT: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that its Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) increased from 64.2 in FY2024 to 67.0 in FY2025, reflecting an improvement of 4.3%.

ABOUT THE FI-INDEX:

• Launched: 2021 by the RBI.
• Purpose: Measures financial inclusion across sectors like Banking, Investments, Insurance, Postal, and Pensions.
• Scoring Range: 0 (complete exclusion) to 100 (full inclusion).
• Index Components:
• Access: 35%
• Usage: 45%
• Quality: 20%

The growth in FY2025 was mainly due to improved usage of services and quality of financial delivery