Financial Outlook of the OIC Member Countries 2017
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The above figure on the number of bank branches is consistent with the bank account as both
clearly indicates low level of financial access recorded for the low income group of OIC
countries which reached to 3.5 branches per 100,000 adults in 2015 while the world average
realized as 14.1 in the same year. Unlike the previous indicator, the UMIG and HIG groups of
the OIC have shown similar performance with the world averages across the selected period.
Over the period of 2012 to 2015, the rate has been realized around 14 branches for both OIC
groups of UMIG and HIG. Although the financial markets and instruments have been recorded
considerable growth and diversified significantly over the years, the branches have not
increased in parallel. Among other factors, this fact can be explained by the widespread usage
of branchless/internet banking.
As a result, the policymakers in the low income group countries should focus on enhancing the
banking activities and access to financial markets by investing on branchless banking
initiatives which have emerged as a cost effective option in recent years.
Data on access to financial markets are more limited. Especially for those countries with low
income level and undeveloped stock exchange markets, the data is very scant. Measures of
market concentration are utilized to have an idea on the level of access to stock and bond
markets. Here we used the Market capitalization excluding top 10 companies to total
market capitalization (%) to approximate access to financial markets. This ratio is calculated
as ‘value of listed shares outside of the ten largest companies to total value of all listed shares’.
Figure 19: Market Capitalization Excluding Top 10 Companies to Total Market Capitalization (%)
Source: Authors’ calculation from the World Bank Database
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OIC-LMIG OIC-UMIG OIC-HIG OIC-Average World Average
2012 2013 2014 2015