You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Alliance for Financial Inclusion’ tag.
> Posted by Dave Grace, Managing Partner, Dave Grace & Associates
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. This blog series spotlights financial inclusion efforts around the globe, shares insights from the FI2020 consultative process and highlights findings from “Mapping the Invisible Market.”
“Pushing financial access is great, but what are clients being pushed into?” This has been the common refrain I’ve heard from regulators in Basel, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, and central bankers in the Caribbean, where I’m sitting now when I talk about the prospects for full financial inclusion within the decade. Given what the financial communities in Europe, India, and the U.S. have been through, we should not be surprised by this common-sense reaction. Consumer protection must be a key component of the Financial Inclusion 2020 platform. Together with a team of policy, technology, regulatory, and financial institution executives, and a former lobbyist for financial cooperatives (um, me), we’ve developed a framework of actionable recommendations that seek to balance access with protection.
We, in the FI2020 Client Protection Working Group, can foresee that even in a state of full financial inclusion, incentives persist for providers to look out for their own interests at the expense of clients, due to certain information, power, and structural imbalances in financial services. The challenge of client protection therefore is to reduce these imbalances and provide countervailing incentives or requirements for positive behavior.
> Posted by Susy Cheston, Senior Advisor, CFI
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion is building a movement toward full financial inclusion by 2020. Accordingly, this blog series will spotlight financial inclusion efforts around the globe, share insights coming out of the creation of a roadmap to full financial inclusion, and highlight findings from research on the “invisible market.”
The Financial Inclusion 2020 campaign begins with an audacious premise: that it is possible, if all the stars align, to achieve full financial inclusion for all with quality financial services by the year 2020. Yes, that would take quite a few stars to line up perfectly, but here are my top seven reasons for optimism as we work to advance inclusion.
1. There are more mobile phones than toothbrushes in the world today.
Bad news for dental health, but good news for billions of previously excluded clients who have access to a device that can include them in financial services if the mobile money folks play their cards right. With mobile subscriptions exceeding 86 percent of the global population, there is great promise if providers can figure out the business models.
> Posted by Dave Grace, Advisor, CFI
HOPE! Maybe it’s my punch drunk self toward the end of a way too long U.S. election cycle, but it’s the word that comes to mind following the meeting of 80 regulatory agencies in Cape Town. The Cape Town affair was the Alliance for Financial Inclusion’s (AFI) annual Global Policy Forum.
What was so hopeful? That 35 central banks from developing and emerging markets made or reported on past commitments to increase financial inclusion! In my two decades of work in development finance, this is the first time that policymakers, who have the power to change financial systems, are creating a global movement to help the poor in a material way. While some of the commitments from central banks are malleable, most are concrete. For example, Malaysia is seeking 95 percent access by 2012, Ghana is seeking 70 percent inclusion by 2017 and is changing its payments, financial literacy and mobile financial services framework to get there.
Facebook
Twitter
Recent Comments