AFI’s Financial Integrity Working Group (FINTWG) recently decided to advance its mandate beyond the current scope of financial integrity issues. The working group will now become the primary technical and implementation support for the Global Standards Sub-Committee (GSSC) as well as adopt a new charter and be renamed the Global Standards Proportionality Working Group (GSPWG), members announced at the conclusion of the working group’s seventh meeting held 9-10 June 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany.
The GSSC is the high level advisory body to the AFI Peer Learning Program, which was launched at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington D.C. in April 2014.
The Global Standards Proportionality Working Group will specifically support the GSSC in three principal areas:
- Document country case studies of the proportionate implementation of global standards;
- Identify potential points of friction between global standards and national policy objectives, based on members’ experiences; and
- Contribute to the development of an extended risk framework which takes account of the risks and consequences of financial exclusion.
The GSPWG will initially be chaired by Mrs. Marina Abdul Kakar, Director of Development Finance and Enterprise at Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), and co-chaired by Mr. Lhassane Benhalima, Deputy Director of Banking Supervision at Morocco’s Bank Al-Maghrib (BKAM)
Participants at the meeting also highlighted the urgent issue of banks closing the accounts of money transfer operators (MTOs) in some countries, which has had adverse consequences for remittance flows to some developing countries. In partnership with the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), the GSPWG will undertake further work on this topic in preparation for its next meeting.
In sustaining the momentum of engagement between the AFI Network and the Standard Setting Bodies (SSBs), Mr. Bernardo Gonzalez, Vice President at the Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV) in Mexico and Chair of AFI’s GSSC, met the secretariats of the SSBs in Basel, Switzerland, 15-16 May 2014. He was joined by Dr. Alfred Hannig, Executive Director at AFI, in high-level discussions with the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision (BCBS), the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI), and the Committee on Payment Settlements and Systems (CPSS). A number of concrete opportunities were identified for AFI members to contribute to the SSBs financial inclusion work streams, including:
- IADI’s revised core principles on deposit insurance;
- BCBS’s forthcoming revised guidance on microfinance and financial inclusion; and
- The CPSS working group in innovations in retail payments.
Moving ahead, both the GSPWG and the GSSC will conduct meetings at the 2014 AFI Global Policy Forum (GPF) set to be held 9-11 September 2014 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The GPF will also feature a dedicated session on “New Developments in Global Standards.”
Furthermore, AFI has been invited to participate in an upcoming high-level meeting of the SSBs in Basel, Switzerland, on 2 October 2014, which will be co-hosted by Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), and Stefan Ingves, Chairman at the BCBS and Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank (the central bank of Sweden).