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In developing and emerging contexts, youth of all ages and backgrounds face substantial and multidimensional challenges when seeking to access the financial services they need to take adequate care of several aspects of their personal and professional lives. These barriers to financial inclusion represent a core development constraint that limits the capability of the youth to unlock their true potential as entrepreneurs, business innovators, and – ultimately – as agents of growth and change in developing contexts.

From the perspective of a financial inclusion practitioner, the ability to assess these barriers with insight and precision – as well as being able to evaluate the overall scenario related to youth financial inclusion in a specific context - is fundamental to produce the policy and programme recommendations that policymakers and development agencies can leverage to design effective strategies to bolster inclusion and entrepreneurship among the youth, promoting their full potential as drivers of development.

These methodological guidelines were created to assist development practitioners, as well as other stakeholders engaged in the financial inclusion domain, in overcoming a series of challenges associated to carrying out assessments of the state of youth financial inclusion at country level. The aim is to provide a series of concrete considerations related to carrying out such assessments, drawn from practical experience, while also proposing a setof standardized steps that can be followed to ensure the quality and comprehensiveness of these types of evaluations.