Webinar Report: Digital Financial Inclusion: Exploring the Strategic Roadmap (2022)
A webinar session titled ‘Unleashing the potential for Digital Financial Inclusion: Exploring the Strategic Roadmap’ was organized as part of the 2nd season of the webinar series "Bangladesh Miracle".
Innovision Consulting Private Limited, in association with Digital Finance Forum Bangladesh and the Department of Economics, North South University, organizing the 6th webinar under the 2nd season of the webinar series "Bangladesh Miracle" - the largest multi-agency development dialogue campaign in Bangladesh.
At first, Md. Rubaiyath Sarwar, Managing Director of Innovision Consulting Private Ltd, moderated the discussion regarding the topic of Digital Financial Inclusion. He mentioned that in today’s world digital financial access is extremely important agenda and most probably the proliferation of digital financial services has been leapfrogged achievements over the Covid-19 period.
Primarily the moderator invited the Keynote speaker to continue the webinar, Mr Sobhan said financial inclusion was not simply opening a bank account only; rather it was about accessibility to financial services, affordability, reasonableness, and addressing financial needs among others. "Financial inclusion is to reduce poverty and boost prosperity," he added.
A big part of the grown-up populace in the nation are still unbanked in spite of all state specialists concerned, including the Bangladesh Bank, are attempting to extend the financial administrations to the rural areas, he said.
According to the presentation, Mobile Financial Services (MFS), banking agents and microfinance organizations are the main contributors to financial inclusion. Mr Sobhan said the expansion of digital loan disbursement through MFS could play a vital role for creating micro entrepreneurs in rural areas.
Then, the moderator introduced the first panelist Raiya Kishwar Ashraf, Manager, Innovation Ecosystem and Partnerships, Social Innovation Lab, BRAC, and asked her how the developments partners were facilitating Digital Financial Inclusion including organization like BRAC as well as inter-connted in the Ecosystem.
She said over the last decade, BRAC has been coordinating financial inclusion that targets women living in low-resource and hard-to-reach areas. We need to develop an ecosystem approach to the problems that act as barriers to financial inclusion (especially of women), the biggest social segment that is often overlooked when financial institutions design financial services and products for limitation of financial literacy, lack of education opportunities, social norms and the subsequent restrictions on agency or mobility are some of the major factors that tend to hinder women’s ability to prove financial responsibility and literacy which turn causes the formal financial market to consider them as credit risks.
Further, the moderator introduced K M Ayreen Aziz, Head of Strategic Alliance, Nagad Ltd., and want to know about the digital solutions for transforming use of financial services and payment systems in our country.
She said the local MFS still provides fundamental services such as cash in, cash out and transfer. "Although financial inclusion has expanded, product usage has not increased proportionately," she said.
As per the digital solution, she mentioned about the e-KYC, lower customer-end maintenance cost, customer oriented services, easily accessible and so on.
Furthermore, the moderator called Dr. S.M. Asif Ehsan and requested him to put his valuable speech on the topic of discussion. He said the requirement for introducing advanced financial products, such as digital credits, savings and micro-insurance through Digital Financial Services (DFS) and Mobile Financial Services (MFS), in the country to cover more people within the framework.
He also emphasised taking a holistic strategy to extend financial inclusion through the DFS, that is now commonly used for basic services such as money transfers and payments.
Then the moderator requested the Director, Bangladesh Bank, Mr. Ashraful Alam, to continue the discussion.
He pointed out there are contrasts between traditional financial inclusion and the DFS. He additionally added that Digital financial services are supposed to be affordable to the customers and sustainable for the service providers.
He talked about four main principles to unleash the potential of digital financial inclusion such as promoting a digital access to financial inclusiveness, willingness to accept innovation, legal framework for enabling digital financial inclusion, and use of affordable technologies.
Finally, the moderator called Mr. Tohurul Hasan and also introduced him. He said there were over 100 million registered MFS subscribers in the country whereas the quantity of active or dynamic users was 40 million. "So, we can see that a huge part of them is inactive. "In addition, after the COVID pandemic, the majority of the workers returned to the manual process of paying and receiving wages, he said. "We need a holistic approach, not an isolated one."
To build an inclusive society, Financial Inclusion is considered as a key instrument in national policies and implementation processes. Bangladesh is still in a situation where Financial Products are inadequate. Lack of Digital Financial Literacy & Skills is another core obstacle. To learn and build the path forward from the achievements & challenges of Bangladesh in Financial Inclusion. Speakers at a webinar have stressed on the need for introducing advanced financial products like digital loans, savings and micro insurance through the country's digital financial services (DFS) to cover more people under the system. They also emphasised taking a holistic approach to widen financial inclusion through the DFS, which is now mostly used for basic services like cash transfers and payments.
|
