New study highlights continuing divergence in growth between high income and low income markets

Efma, a global not-for-profit organisation, is pleased to announce the publication of its 2014 Yearbook. The Yearbook provides a comprehensive summary of the state of the retail financial services industry in markets across the world.

The study examines global statistical trends in retail banking and also looks at the trends in each of four regions: Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and the Americas. The Yearbook contains a ranking of banks which covers a total of 78 countries across the four regions. These 78 countries represent 96% of global GDP and 86% of the global population, providing extremely good coverage of the industry.

“Our unique global indices for key measures of retail banking distribution and products illustrate the continuing divergence in growth between high income and low income markets,” said PatrickDesmarès, Efma’s Secretary General. “The global statistics on mobile banking and payments are not yet sufficient to produce an index but, nevertheless, the rapid growth trend is clear from the countries and banks which are producing data. The growth in online banking is more of a mixed picture although it may become increasingly difficult to distinguish between mobile and online banking with different types of devices being used at different times by the same consumers.”

In addition to countries profiled in previous editions, the 2014 Yearbook sees coverage of

Poland, Thailand, Colombia, and three countries in East Africa – Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – where there are lots of interesting developments taking place.

“Poland has some very innovative banks and has been one of the growth markets in the European Union in the last several years,” Desmarès said. “Thailand and Colombia have some similar characteristics as rapidly developing but still low income countries. In contrast, the East African countries have very low income and generally weak infrastructure but have been the global leaders in mobile money developments.”

The Efma Yearbook 2014 is now available to download from www.efma.com/Yearbook.