Launch of global Alliance for Financial Inclusion signals movement toward access to savings, financial services

I subscribe to Charles Klingman’s Unbanked News listserve, and, since I work with the Global Assets Project, one of today’s emails naturally caught my eye.

It was about Monday’s launch in Nairobi of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, a coalition of financial policymakers and central banks from over 60 developing countries.

Its press release emphasizes that savings, investments, and building assets are a crucial instrument to raising national income and increasing financial stability. Yet an estimated 2.5 billion people don’t have access to savings accounts and other financial services.

Based in Bangkok and launched with funding from the Gates Foundation, the network therefore aims to share and generate knowledge about methods and policies about increasing access to financial services.

As an aside, I liked what Tarisa Watanagase, governor of the Bank of Thailand, had to say about generating knowledge from inside:

“…[AFI] puts us members in the driver’s seat to identify and create solutions to increase the availability and choices of financial services in our own countries. Since we understand our countries’ circumstances better than outside organizations, AFI creates an exceptional forum for us to share policies that work and learn from other policymakers about solutions that work for them.”

The six financial inclusion policy areas on which AFI is focusing are: agent banking, diversification of financial products and providers, state bank reforms, financial identity, consumer protection, and mobile phone banking.

Given the recent increase in interest in the realm of microfinance and financial inclusion in providing all with a save place to save and make deposits, it should be interesting to see how AFI evolves and responds to a discourse that is increasingly concerned with providing access to savings and asset-building for all.