Turning Inclusion into Financial Health

On Wednesday September 25, the United Nations held a special session to celebrate the work of Queen Máxima of the Netherlands to foster global financial inclusion. 

Fifteen years ago, Queen Máxima was appointed as the UN Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance. She has since worked with world leaders and traveled the globe in an effort to find ways to bring financial services to more people living in the developing world. 

Last week’s special session gathered world leaders, industry experts, and global citizens to acknowledge the amazing progress made towards this goal, but also to recognize the work still to be done. 

Going Beyond Financial Inclusion

Throughout the encouraging and informative speeches given by everyone from Bill Gates to Queen Máxima herself, the message was clear: great strides have been made towards global financial inclusion, but we need to set our sights beyond mere inclusion. Nearly everyone who spoke touched on the idea that inclusion is a needed first step, but our goal should be global financial health. This message was underpinned when Queen Máxima’s new UN title was revealed — United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Financial Health.

The added focus on financial health did not overshadow the necessity of inclusion nor the accomplishments made toward that goal. In 2011, only 51% of the global population had access to a financial account or services. That number has risen to 76% today. Over the last 15 years, Queen Máxima and her team have leveraged the connective power of cell phones and the internet to bring financial services to remote and impoverished communities around the world. However, she was the first to say the work is not finished. There are still an estimated 1.5 billion adults globally who remain unbanked. 

Reaching the Unbanked

World Bank’s president Ajay Banga, gave his insights into how to not only resolve the global unbanked population crisis, but also improve the financial health of those who have access to financial services. He broke the problem down into four steps: identification, access, use, and history. 

• Identification: Without a formal government-issued ID, individuals are barred from access to many things, one of the most important being financial services. In fact, according to Bill Gates, 3.3 billion people globally do not have formal IDs. 
• Access: While advances in digital banking have begun to bridge the gap, this still remains a fundamental aspect of financial health.
• Use: Value only follows access when people use the services they have access too. Unfortunately, this is not always the case — half of those in the developing world who have access to banking services do not use them. 
• History: Once people have access to and use  basic financial services, they build a financial history. This leads to being offered additional financial services such as loans.

Through Banga’s perspective, the road map for fintechs and financial providers to capitalize on the opportunity to serve a more global population becomes clear. Queen Máxima expressed her intention to work with industry leaders to make providing financial services globally both easier and more profitable. 

Leveraging Open Banking and AI

Jennifer Tescher, founder and CEO of the Financial Health Network, added to this idea as she spoke in a closing panel on how to improve financial health around the world. In looking to the future, she equated the importance of smart phones and the internet over the last 20 years to what open banking and artificial intelligence (AI) will mean for the industry during the next 20 years. 

As fintechs and financial providers adopt and hone the use of open banking and AI, they should look to the global market and how advancements in tech could serve a broader global population. Jennifer said, “Open banking gives both the consumer and the provider the full picture of the person’s financial life. It is really hard to give good advice if you are only seeing a sliver of the picture.” 

“If we want to contribute to the financial health of people and society we need to change our products in a way that fits people’s complex financial lives.” —Queen Máxima