Financial Sector Assessment a handbook, Chapter 4 Assessing Financial Structure and Financial Development, imf and World Bank, August 2005

4.5.2
Households, Firms, and Microenterprises 
While reliable data for a quantitative assessment of SMEs’ access to financial services are 
hard to come by, it is even more difficult to quantitatively assess households’, firms’, and 
microenterprises’ access to financial services. There do not seem to be any cross-country 
databases available, and only a few countries have detailed survey or census data on access 
to financial services by households, farms, and microenterprises. The World Bank has 
undertaken Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMSs) in several countries, but the 
finance component is relatively small in most cases. 
In other cases, the dearth of data precludes a detailed analysis of households’, firms’, 
and microenterprises’ access to financial services. However, anecdotal and even limited 
quantitative evidence can provide some indication of social and geographic variation in 
access by those groups and can help define follow-up work. 
Additional evidence on access may be available from suppliers of financial services. 
If such evidence is available, for example, one can analyze loan and deposit size distribu-
tion data for corporate sectors, household sectors, or both. This analysis would indicate 
the extent of small loans and deposits, which would show indirect evidence about access 
by small firms and households. In addition, data from the providers of financial services 
to those segments—such as microfinance, development finance institutions, or savings 
banks—can provide further evidence on access. An indication of the outreach and pen-
etration of the different provider groups can help evaluate their effectiveness. Sometimes, 
quantitative and anecdotal evidence on the competitiveness and possible segmentation 
of household and microenterprise sector can be obtained. Unlike in the enterprise sec-

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Chapter 4: Assessing Financial Structure and Financial Development