Sustainability and trust: financial inclusion in the Global South

Lack of access to banking and financial services appreciably hinders development, particularly in the global South. For this reason, financial inclusion is a crucial objective of the Sustainable Development Goals. One main barrier to financial inclusion is the lack of trust in banking. From a sample of 40 developing countries and 82,724 individuals, we verify that multinational banks can increase trust in banking by incorporating sustainability criteria into their business model.