High banking costs and the inability to maintain savings remain the biggest barriers preventing thousands of Namibians from accessing formal financial services, even as financial inclusion has reached a record 86%. Formal financial inclusion increased to 81.5%, with 75.6% of adults holding commercial bank accounts and 71.3% using other formal non-bank financial institutions. While 40.1% of urban residents can reach a bank within 30 minutes, only 5.7% of rural residents enjoy the same level of access. In contrast, 28.3% of rural residents travel more than three hours to reach a bank, compared with just 1.6% of urban residents,” the report states. Savings remain central to household financial management, with 72.5% of adults reporting that they save in some form.