Global Forum Roundup
Dear Friends,
Welcome back to the Financial Inclusion 2020 Global Forum! In this magazine we capture highlights from the Global Forum, which we all agree was an extraordinary event.
The Center for Financial Inclusion has received wonderful feedback from those who attended. Many comments compliment the quality of the speakers, discussions, and content. We’re glad you noticed, because it took a great deal of effort! We’re also glad many of you noticed the production quality; our conference producers, Linder & Associates, made it look so easy.
Personally, we were struck by the vitality arising from this carefully selected group. The main hall and lobby constantly buzzed with new ideas. We know of quite a number of contacts made at the Global Forum that are already turning into important relationships.
Our hopes for the Global Forum were to enable people who ordinarily work on separate aspects of financial inclusion to connect so they would become more aware of how their own work fits into a broader picture. Call it a community, call it a movement – what’s important is that more of the actors committed to financial inclusion share both the goals and the vision about how to reach them. The roadmap principles are a tool for the actors to advance inclusion in synergy.
These pages highlight some major themes from the gathering. Among the most important is getting it right for clients. The technology is here, it’s available, and it’s waiting to be applied. Attention now needs to turn more clearly to creating value for clients. While this sounds like common sense, the conversations at the Forum convinced me that it is in fact a profound challenge. Innocent Ephraim of Vodacom told an insightful story that illustrated how even major corporations can get it wrong, despite careful market research. The disability representatives dared everyone to live up to their community’s mantra of “Nothing about us without us.” And Sendhil Mullainathan helped us view the mindset of people in scarcity in a new light. After the Forum, Graham Macmillan of Citi Foundation reflected that the conference marked a turning point on financial capability – from something “over there” to an essential aspect of financial inclusion. We hope each of you had new insights of your own.
All of us on the Financial Inclusion 2020 team are grateful for the enthusiastic help and participation from so many of you who contributed to the Global Forum. We look forward to continuing to share our journey with you.
Elisabeth Rhyne
Managing Director, Center for Financial Inclusion
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December 2013
Susy Cheston
Senior Advisor, Center for Financial Inclusion