Ownership, governance, equality & healthy competition: key to global financial inclusion solutions, AFI ED tells Global Solutions Forum

Emerging and developing countries are championing ground-breaking financial inclusion policies through ownership, equality, peer learning and peer pressure, AFI Executive Director Dr. Alfred Hannig told Implementors Forum at the Global Solutions Summit in Berlin.

Addressing an audience of political, business and civic leaders, Hannig highlighted the “energy” of AFI members to take their destinies into their own hands and define their own development process towards “driving change”.

“AFI creates not only an environment for peer learning but also peer pressure,” Hannig said on 19 March, 2019, explaining that as “one country moves forward, then another feels pressure to follow suit”.

“It’s a healthy competition for us, which is driven by a common goal to include as many people as possible into the formal financial sector”.

This motivation has had a significant knock-on impact on financial inclusion and over the past decade, AFI members brought over half a billion of the world’s unbanked into the formal financial sector.

“Ownership, governance, equality and healthy competition are often principles that we tend to postulate”, he said and explained that AFI has put these principles into practice.  “We have seen 600 million people included in the formal financial sector and over 500 policy reforms that are the result of our activities”.

Despite having members from over 90 developing and emerging countries – all at varying stages of development -, Hannig explained that they were treated as equals at AFI. “One of our principles is equality. In our world, it doesn’t matter where you are from. Everyone has a seat at the table,” he said.

Echoing this sentiment was Dr. Christoph Beier Vice Chair at the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), who spoke of the importance of inclusivity.

“One success factor is really to take the different perspectives of different stakeholders and groups seriously and involve them in the discussion and the negotiations of new solutions,” he said. “All global solutions have to be implemented at the local scale. Local strengthening, local leaders and capacities and adapt global solutions to local conditions is key.”

“We have come a long way,” Hannig said. “The G20 needs to better listen to the non-G20 countries”.

About the Global Solutions Summit (GSS)

Implementers Forum – How to Make Implementation Work aims to provide a platform for those who are contributing to global solutions on a practical level, addressing people from the global civil society, ranging from business, foundations, politics or civic society organizations. Later in the day, Governor of Bank of Mozambique Dr. Rogerio Zandamela, and AFI Executive Director are main speakers at the Summit’s Implementing Sustainable Finance panel.

The Global Solutions Summit is an annual event that brings together international research organizations, thought-leaders and decision-makers from across political, business and civic communities. The event addresses G20 governments and provides narratives and implementable recommendations to deal with the challenges on the G20 agenda: cross‐border issues that require international cooperation to solve them. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the main keynote speaker.