Measuring fintech development through composite indices: A text-mining-based review of fintech index studies

Abstract

Fintech has become one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding domains in financial innovation, profoundly transforming the way financial products and services are designed, delivered, and consumed. To evaluate the level of fintech development across countries, regions, and markets, it is essential to construct a comprehensive and data-driven metric - a Fintech Index - that enables comparative assessment and evidence-based policy formulation. This study provides a systematic literature review of research that has contributed to the conceptualization and construction of fintech index. By applying a text mining approach to Scopus database on fintech-related publications, we employ automated techniques to extract, classify, and synthesize key themes, methodological approaches, and index dimensions. The review framework integrates several stages of data mining—data collection, cleaning, and transformation—combined with natural language processing (NLP) and topic modeling (LDA) to identify dominant research clusters and emerging topics in the fintech index literature. Our findings reveal that most existing studies focus on three core dimensions: fintech development indicators, adoption indicators and financial inclusion indicators. Existing studies show that Fintech contributes to industry growth, innovation, green finance, sustainability, and entrepreneurial development by reducing financial constraints and improving resource mobilization. Fintech adoption is mainly driven by perceived usefulness, trust, institutional support, social influence, and facilitating conditions. Meanwhile, Fintech inclusion expands access to digital financial services, supports poverty reduction, and promotes inclusive economic growth. This paper contributes both a methodological framework for text-mining–based literature reviews and a conceptual synthesis that advances understanding of how fintech indices are defined, structured, and operationalized in global research.