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Introduction
There is a large body of academic literature about financial inclusion (FI) and financial exclusion (FE) in both applied and theoretical works. These studies are meaningful particularly because they spot the specific needs of vulnerable communities and FE processes related to changes in society. However, despite the existing well of consolidated knowledge, research gaps in this field present ample opportunity for further analysis. One area that provides such opportunity results from the contrast between the work performed in developed and developing nations. The three key distinguishing variables that explain most of these differences are: the groups on which these studies are performed, the circumstances to which these studies apply and the type of exclusion that affects the given population. One further consideration is that although the emergence of fintech and digital banking in the financial services sector has resulted in cost-cutting and overall increased efficiencies (European Parliament, 2017), these savings have not morphed axiomatically into the reduction of FE in developed nations. Furthermore, in recent years, the ageing population of these developed economies has experienced an increase in inequality and social vulnerability. These events are in part linked to the reluctance of the older brackets of their population to adopt new technologies, an attitude that prevents the overall use of remote banking services by a key portion of the citizenry (Fernandez-Olit et al., 2018). This finding is contrary to that of developing countries, where the widespread use of technology – and specifically of mobile banking – has been of essence to the development of FI processes (Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2015). All these circumstances explain the fact that the research obtained from work done on undeveloped economies varies greatly from that derived from similar studies in developed nations. One additional difference is that no reviews of the literature on FI/FE in developed countries exists, while there are a number of these works that refer to undeveloped economies (see Shaikh and Karjaluoto, 2015; Kabakova and Plaksenkov, 2018; Kim et al., 2018). This paper plans to fill in this void.
The research gap that motivates the key objective of our work will produce a systematic review of a decade of literature on FI and FE in developed economies. This review is a clear and...