It brings together members of central banks, superintendends and finance ministries from 80 nations to seek the best methods to expand financial inclusion.
El Salvador is hosting the 2024 Global Policy Forum (GPF), the world’s largest event on financial inclusion. It is co-organized by the Central Reserve Bank (BCR) and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI). It started on Tuesday and will end this Thursday.
El Salvador is the first country in Central America to host the event that brings together representatives of central banks, superintendences of the Financial System and finance ministries of 80 nations in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
According to Inés Páez, director of Innovation and Financial Inclusion of the Superintendency of Banks of the Dominican Republic, although the Global Policy Forum is the main event, at the same time several thematic working tables are developed focused on different aspects that facilitate a population group to access a formal bank account.
Topics include Financial Services, Accompaniment for Access to Financing of Mipymes, User Protection, data management to make better decisions and national strategies to increase financial inclusion. There is also a cross-cutting theme, which is the gender approach.
Fernando Rivarola, Supervisory Manager of the Superintendency of Banks of the Central Bank of Paraguay, explained that the meeting is also important because, within the framework of it, the general assembly of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) is held, of which El Salvador has been a member since 2012.
In this, says Rivarola, the road map of the entire organization is established on a global scale, which then permeates the different regions, which translates into specific products in countries, in this case, new public policies that have a direct impact on people’s lives.
“Every country takes something depending on their needs. In the case of the Dominican Republic, we in the four years were focused on the financial user individually, but now we take a new focus and we will be focused on mipymes,” said Inés Páez.
“In 2020, (in Paraguay) we had 40% of the adult population with access to a bank account and now we have 60%, it is a jump of 20 %. If we talk about the economically active population, it is 95 per cent,” Rivarola said.
According to the Paraguayan, what happens after the meetings, if there is an experience they want to replicate in their country of origin, is that they receive the accompaniment of the inspiring nation to obtain better results.
This article has been translated after first appearing in El Salvador