AFI is “exactly what the doctor ordered” said Amar Bhattacharya, Director of the G24 Secretariat, at a meeting of more than 20 policymakers at the IMF/World Bank spring conference in Washington D.C.

The “closed door” event, which was hosted by the G24 Secretariat at the end of April, was designed to introduce central bankers and other senior policymakers from G24 countries to AFI and to identify ways that AFI’s members, who represent around 70 percent of the world’s “unbanked” population, could work together to accelerate greater financial access for the poor.

“One of the reasons that the G24 is so keen to collaborate with AFI is that it puts policymakers in the driving seat,” said Amar Bhattacharya at the start of the meeting. “This is exactly what the doctor ordered. Having a network of policymakers in developing countries working together on financial inclusion and being able to learn from each other and through experimentation, as AFI offers its members, is great.

“This is especially important for tackling financial inclusion since the solutions largely rest in developing countries. There’s a huge amount of innovation going on in these countries but it often doesn’t follow the typical textbook model so it has to be shared case-by-case and peer-to-peer to identify common learnings and to adapt them to countries’ individual circumstances. AFI provides a great and much-needed vehicle for doing this.”

Dr Tarisa Watanagase, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, and Guillermo Babatz, President of Mexico’s National Banking and Securities Commission, who are both AFI Start-Up Committee members, also highlighted the fact that AFI’s independence gives members the freedom to devise the most appropriate solutions for their countries, based on best practice and evidence from around the globe. “We want the ingredients, not the recipes,” said Guillermo Babatz. “There isn’t a simple, single solution for every country.”

Policymakers from a broad spectrum of countries, from Egypt, Ethiopia and Brazil to Pakistan, also contributed to the discussion.