Importancia del sector cooperativo en la inclusión financiera en el Ecuador durante la pandemia covid-19

Abstract

Financial inclusion lies in the access of individuals and institutions to the appropriate financial services to meet their savings, credit, payment and insurance needs in a legal and systematized manner. Essentially, financial inclusion lowers poverty levels and improves people's quality of life in terms of well-being and inequality. Despite the fact that the number of financial accounts has grown in recent years, there is a different perspective of people in terms of satisfaction with the services provided by savings and credit cooperatives, taking the Covid-19 pandemic as a middle line. In this context, the present work investigates the importance and impact of cooperatives on financial inclusion in the time of Covid-19, for which information from the Central Bank of Ecuador and the Superintendence of Popular and Solidarity Economy is first used to carry out a descriptive analysis of financial inclusion in the country; Subsequently, with primary information through surveys and secondary sources, a statistical analysis is carried out that allows knowing the perspectives of people before the pandemic and during it in terms of satisfaction with the financial services and products of the cooperative sector. The results show that people are more satisfied before the pandemic with financial services such as savings accounts, loans or credits, payment terms and amounts, savings plans and interest rates. Likewise, access to these services has improved during the pandemic in terms of mobile applications, electronic banking, wire transfers, and interbank transactions, so their use has increased significantly, as has people's satisfaction.