This paper examines the effect of financial development, measured by broad money, domestic credit, and mobile money, on poverty and human development in the Southeast Asian economies, using the dataset from 1990 to 2017. The findings suggest that broad money and domestic credit contribute to poverty reduction and promote human development. The role of mobile money is seen to have a statistically positive impact only if we analyse it with human development. Additionally, when we take a closer look at the different stage of economic, political, and institutional development in this region, we found that the positive effect of broad money and domestic credit is mostly found only in the less developed and less democratic countries. The mobile money, on the other hand, is found to statistically promote the human development in both groups of countries, but there is no statistical relationship for poverty analysis.

NOTE: The appendix files have been added from 31-08-2021