Evaluating the Efficiency of Financial Inclusion (Special reference to Jharkhand, India)

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to analyze the status of financial inclusion in the state of Jharkhand, India. It tries to evaluate the efficiency of the financial institutions in terms of their outreach to clients and overall client satisfaction. Responses were collected separately from the service providers and customers through two different questionnaires and a convenience sampling method was adopted to select the respondents. Hypotheses development and testing was done to analyze data using a regression model. The first questionnaire examined the relationship between various financial inclusion determinants with “Outreach” and the second questionnaire studied the relationship between financial inclusion determinants with “Customer satisfaction.”  The empirical results of the study exhibit that the financial inclusion determinants have a positive effect on the outreach to clients and overall customer satisfaction levels and improve the customers’ financial as well as their social capital base. This in turn fosters the financial inclusion activity in the region.