Efficiency of financial inclusion in Colombia, 2014

Abstract

There is a very strong correlation between exclusion of services offered by formal financial sector and poverty. For this reason, this work measures, for year 2014, the efficiency of the financial inclusion in Colombia. The analysis includes banks, financing companies, and financial credit unions which are not studied in a global manner by applying the data envelopment analysis, a non-parametric linear programming meth­odology which, through a double optimization process, generates efficiency indicators. This research gives an answer to the following questions: What types of entities are efficient and how many of them? How is the distribution of entities according to the efficiency index range? Is there any distinguishing group? Results reveal that only 25% of the institutions subject to analysis are efficient.