At last week’s meeting of AFI’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Policy Initiative (ECAPI), an ambitious 2024-2028 workplan was approved. The plan aims to facilitate bridging financial inclusion gaps (men-vs-women, urban-vs-rural, etc.) in ECAPI member countries, enhance members’ capacity to implement financial inclusion policies and AFI knowledge products, and promote ECAPI globally.

Over the next four years, ECAPI members plan to address financial inclusion challenges in the region across several pillars, including strengthening regulatory and supervisory frameworks, enhancing financial literacy and consumer protection, facilitating knowledge exchange on Inclusive Green Finance and Green FinTech, promoting FinTech innovation and digitalization, and strengthening regional cooperation and coordination in ECAPI. A number of breakthrough and region-wide initiatives is expected, including a Behavioral Economic Research Hub in the Central Bank of Armenia, region-wide IGF project, and others.

ECAPI members also discussed over-indebtedness and tackling fraud, gaining insight from Bank Negara Malaysia’s experience in these areas, as well as from ECAPI members’  own jurisdictions.

“Over-indebtedness and fraud are pushing many people out from formal financial services, and are discrediting the sector” said ECAPI Chair, Hovhannes Khachatryan, Deputy Governor of Central Bank of Armenia.  “We heard about a number of legal, technical and behavioral instruments to address these issues today, and we’ll be sharing insight among the ECAPI group in order to help countries tackle these challenges.”

You can learn more about AFI’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Policy Initiative here.