A new assessment of the level of the "unbanked" in Australia puts the proportion of the population excluded from access to everyday financial services at 0.8 per cent.
This group holds none of a simple basket of three financial products - a basic account, a credit card with a limit of A$3000 and household and car insurance - a study by the
Centre for Social Impact at the University of New South Wales has found.
A further 14.8 per cent of people are "severely excluded", the study found. Though practically all this second group had a bank account most lacked both a credit card and general insurance.
The study also found that 41 per cent of people were "marginally excluded" on the grounds that they lacked insurance (only a handful of this third group lacked a bank account).
This means that only 43.4 per cent of the adult population could be considered to be financially "included", with access to all three everyday products.
National Australia Bank funded the study, which updates the work of other social researchers.
The study found some progress was being made towards reducing the number of the unbanked, with the percentage of people aged between 15 and 69 without any basic financial services falling from 1.5 per cent in 2007. The researchers put this down to the availability of fee-free basic transaction accounts since 2008.
They estimated the annual cost of access to its basket of three services at around $1740, of which the average cost of running a basic bank account was $92. Of 10 providers surveyed, the cost range was between $21 and $142.
The average cost of a credit card was $793 and the average cost of insurance to cover household contents and a car was $855.