Abstract: Along with the gradual advancement of China’s financial system reform, strengthening financial crisis management and bank risk prevention is an important tough battle to promote the transformation of the financial system. From the perspective of inclusive finance, this paper conducts a theoretical study in the framework of banks bearing risks. The findings show that the development of inclusive finance can significantly reduce the risk level of banks. Based on the BankScope global bank database and the inclusive financial data, it is found through the empirical study that the inclusive financial development has a significant reduction effect on bank risk exposure, and this effect is heterogeneous among different sample classifications. Meanwhile, the inclusive finance can reduce the risks that banks are faced with by increasing the proportion of bank retail deposits and lowering the average interest cost of banks, while the improvement of the governance environment can amplify the risk reduction effect of the inclusive finance and reduce the risk level of the banks. This means that the introduction of “prioritized savings and prioritized access”financial savings policies in remote areas can strengthen banks’ financial services to disadvantaged groups and promote the development of the inclusive finance, which is essential to the promotion of the healthy development of financial markets.

Key words: inclusive finance, bank risk taking, bank stability, financial risk prevention, governance environment