India’s biggest fintech has doubled its user base in a year and is on track to have 500 million customers by 2020. It is backed by Ant Financial and Softbank and spurred by state policy on financial inclusion. How far can Paytm go?

Arnold Ekpe, a mainstay of African banking for the past three decades, has been appointed chair of financial inclusion firm Microcred’s supervisory board.

The top three banks globally for diversity and inclusion (D&I) are Bank of Montreal, BNP Paribas and Barclays, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

While an increasing number of studies point to diversity having a positive impact on business performance, it needs to be coupled with inclusion if financial services companies want to see cultural and societal change.

From challenging views on diversity in advertising to increasing productivity through homeworking initiatives, Lloyds is changing the way the corporations and society tackle D&I.

In corporate social responsibility, it is also rare to find financial institutions who manage to take their contributions beyond the occasional charitable donations, but rather put their financial acumen to good use in the community.

Developed markets have much to learn from the spread of digital financial services among the poorest in the emerging world.

Unbanked women an opportunity for banks; inclusion boosts economic growth.

An extraordinary revolution is taking place in digital banking in India. Driven by the state, it is anchored on a billion-strong biometric database to finally bring financial inclusion to a country that needs it more than any other. Banks may face a binary outcome: be quick or be dead.

Technology is finally bringing banking services to the unbanked in both developing and developed markets. While technology companies are driving this transformational shift, it looks increasingly likely that traditional banks will ultimately be service providers. They have everything to gain if they can form partnerships and create a long-term strategy.

When microfinance banks in Africa speak of the rise of new technology, they usually focus on its potential and, perhaps disingenuously, play down the risks. They say the spread of mobile phones and internet access enables small loans to reach Africa’s rural poor more efficiently than ever before. But while international microfinancier Finca is aware of these opportunities, it knows from painful experience in Uganda that new technology opens up new vulnerabilities too.

DBS’s launch of a new digital bank in India provides a test case for a branchless model of banking in Asia that will influence a dozen other markets in the years ahead.