Pakistan’s financial inclusion reaches 71% and gender gap narrows to 27%, State Bank governor says
State Bank of Pakistan Governor Jameel Ahmad says financial inclusion in Pakistan has reached 71%, with the gender gap down to 27%, as he opened a four-day learning programme with the Alliance for Financial Inclusion in Islamabad.
Pakistan’s financial inclusion rate has reached 71%, while the gap between men’s and women’s access to formal finance has narrowed to 27%, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Governor Jameel Ahmad said on Tuesday, as he opened a four-day joint learning programme in Islamabad organised by the central bank and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI).
Addressing the inaugural session, Ahmad linked the inclusion figures directly to the climate challenge, arguing that climate change and financial exclusion feed into each other. Communities most exposed to floods, heat and crop failure, he said, are often the ones with the least access to insurance, savings accounts and formal credit — leaving them least able to recover when disaster strikes.
The programme has brought together 38 representatives of central banks and financial regulators from 24 countries across four continents, with the aim of turning green finance policies into practical measures that regulators can actually implement. Pakistan is using the gathering to share its own work in the area, including its Green Taxonomy and its framework for climate-related financial risks.
Ahmad pointed to the country’s 2022 floods as the starkest illustration of why the two agendas belong together. The disaster caused nearly $15 billion in physical damage and a further $15 billion in economic losses, affected more than 30 million people and damaged 2.2 million homes, according to the account he gave at the session — a scale of loss that showed how quickly uninsured households can be pushed into lasting hardship.
The governor traced the central bank’s climate work back over nearly a decade, citing the Green Banking Guidelines issued in 2017 and the Environmental and Social Risk Management Framework introduced in 2022. He also referred to the Climate Stress Testing Guidelines issued in December 2025, which are designed to help banks and other financial institutions measure how exposed they are to climate-related shocks.
On women’s access to finance, Ahmad highlighted the Pakistan Women Inclusive Finance Programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank, and noted that Pakistan joined the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code in 2025, with the State Bank acting as the anchor institution for the financial industry. The 27% gender gap figure marks a further narrowing from the 30% level cited in the central bank’s own remarks late last year, when women’s inclusion stood at 52%.
The figures sit within a longer trajectory. Financial inclusion in Pakistan has risen from 16% in 2015 to 64% in 2023, under two earlier national strategies, and the current National Financial Inclusion Strategy for 2024–28 sets a stated aim of lifting overall inclusion to 75% by 2028 while bringing the gender gap down to 25%. The latest numbers suggest the country is moving in that direction, though the remaining gap still represents millions of adults outside the formal system.
For households, the practical meaning of inclusion is straightforward: an account in a person’s own name, a safe place to save, a way to receive payments, and access to credit and insurance on fair terms rather than through informal lenders. For smallholder farmers and small businesses — two groups Ahmad singled out — formal finance can mean the difference between rebuilding after a flood and losing a livelihood altogether.
What happens next will depend on implementation rather than announcements, a point Ahmad himself stressed, saying policy success should be judged by its impact on people’s lives. The four-day programme is intended to give regulators from the 24 participating countries concrete tools to carry home, from climate risk rules to products designed for women, farmers and small firms.
Figures checked at 05:25 PKT on 4 November 2026.
This post is market news information only, not financial advice.
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