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tv   Key Capitol Hill Hearings  CSPAN  August 27, 2015 4:00am-6:01am EDT

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i would not be able to help montenegro bay or jamaica at the present time. but mr. mayor, we need your help. i need to rebuild, but i cannot afford that. i applied for a trailer, and still have not received that. could you answer some of those questions? i appreciate that. it is the same thing in pine village. they are mostly working people. they cannot afford to pay the $60,000. i would have to raise my house seven feet that would mean i would have to have an escalator. that is unfair.
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or washington to come here and determine we would have to raise that kind of leverage, i went through all the floods. could you explain that for me? mayor nagin: what are you running for? >> excuse me? mayor nagin: what are you running for? >> dogcatcher. no, i'm not running for anything, i'm just a working person. i just asked the question. mayor nagin: let me try to answer -- >> you never answer any question. mayor nagin: enough of the political ads. >> i'm not political. mayor nagin: these are legitimate questions. pine village is an area that really needs electricity. they are working to get you electricity, and their commitment is to have electricity there by january. once you get electricity, the world will change out there. as it relates to you and limiting your home, that is a personal decision that the homeowner has to make. if you want to elevate your home, and do it. if not, then that is your own personal decision. all we can do is take the federal law on the books and try to get people as much information as we possibly can. if you want to talk to the fema
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representatives, we can get hem to talk about when you can get a trailer. >> i was not devastated, but most people don't have 50 plus or under. i never went through the flood. it is not my fault of the levees broke. mayor nagin: i agree. look, i totally agree with you. based upon the current information that we have, you have to make some decisions on how you want to rebuild, and continued to watch the baker act in congress. maybe that will give you some more options and support for how to rebuild. that is all i can tell you right now. >> hello, i am here to talk about the various theories and strategies. for rebuilding we have to be very careful who we listen to. there are a lot of people from elsewhere who don't understand the city that think our problems are what make us unique, or amusing. we have to stop listening to people who make it sound like we are authentic because we were the murder capital. that's mated frightening. -- that made it frightening. they say they miss the shoe sign scam -- shine scam on anal street.
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here are a lot of people that
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they think the people that run this city we lie on the criminals to be elected. the also have to stop thinking all or nothing thinking. why isn't there any middle ground? we did not deal with our problems before hand. we want to have good schools. we have millions of police from everywhere, it seems to be helping. we need a category five levee but we will not get it if we tell washington we will go back to being the same way we were. >> if you could bring your question to a close. >> i don't have a question. but will weep pay attention to making the city a bit -- will we pay attention to making the city a better place. mayor nagin: thank you, sir, for your comments. >> hello, i am from lake view. i have lived in orleans parish my entire life. i've been like to set the record straight that this was not a four black issue -- poor black issue. there were poor white people, middle class black people, and wealthy black and white people that were involved in this act of congress. no, it is not a political problem right now, it is our problem. who is it when you referred to "we" and "us" to get the army corps of engineers to demolish the homes of the homeowners that want their homes demolished? can you answer that one question? mayor nagin: if you could provide us with your information that you would like to have a demolished, you can send that information to the city and we will forward that to the corps of engineers. >> it is my understanding that orleans parish needs to ask the state coordinating office in baton rouge to ask fema to direct the army corps of
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engineers to demolish these homes. mayor nagin: you have been doing a little homework. >> yes sir, i have. i got it from the horse's mouth. i would like to ask you, mr. mayor, to ask the state coordinating officer, to ask fema, to direct the army corps of engineers after we signed the waiver. so that we do not have to pay for this demolition all on our own, because congress allowed my home in lake view to be demolished, or flooded, not god. i believe fema needs to step up to the plate to help pay for me to demolish my home so i can rebuild it up to code, to give me the $30,000 to raise my ouse 15 feet so fema doesn't have to come into my neighborhood again so i won't be flooded anymore. that is one situation. i will contact you, sir. i will. mayor nagin: you understand the process. end us a letter, saying you
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have to come into my neighborhood again so i won't be flooded anymore. that is one situation. i will contact you, sir. i will. mayor nagin: you understand the process. send us a letter, saying you want your house demolished.
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please, i ask you for one more minute. it doesn't sound like it will be very advantageous to let the united states corporations i our homes out and resell -- buy our homes then resell them to us when it will be at denmark in valley which will be double or triple what our homes were worth pre-katrina. if there is somebody that can clarify the issue -- mayor nagin: it is my understanding that the way the bill is designed is that there are some modifications that need to come out. first of all, they will start a preconstruction price for you to buy back into. it will not be the escalated value after everything is done in the neighborhood. > that is really good to know. mayor nagin: the second thing is that, if you do not want to participate, you do not have to. >> but if you don't, or don't
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rebuild, we will all be in line for a contractor to rebuild. if you don't, it says they can force you to sell out to them or force you to start building. mayor nagin: it is my understanding that will take that language out. >> thank you. >> please move on to the next question. mayor nagin: one more. >> my mother was 86 years old. i would not leave my mother, she has lost everything and was renting. now, i am ineligible from help because i had help -- flood know. mayor nagin: the second thing my mother has not even received the first penny from fema. now, i signed a lease for her insurance. on a wednesday, and on thursday morning the landlord called the agent and told her she wanted to raise the rent by $400. i signed the lease the next morning for $200 more we split the difference because i had to put my mother in a safe place. the rent gouging is over the top. my mother is on a fixed income, she needs help from fema, and i cannot even get -- i have gone to the jcc and i am going back tomorrow. another thing that is happening, i paid for the flood insurance and fema is trying to give me less. i have quite a lot of issues here. i know i am not the only one. mayor nagin: we have to take up some of your issues at the next town hall meeting. if we can get you with fema, deducted budget mother's issues. >> you can turn the mic down and step closer. >> good evening, mr. mayor. i am a resident on saint anthony's street. my electricity was on, i am under the section eight housing budget program and i fear when the inspectors come out they will tell me it is not livable. e don't have anywhere to
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go.
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there will be any decertification of any properties in the short term. i don't think you should be overly concerned about that. if you do get an inspector to come out, get that information to us. >> i have another question. where will you go for civil cases? mayor nagin: excuse me? >> where do you go to get civil cases handled? mayor nagin: it is my understanding the civil court in gonzales -- there is also one in algiers. we have almost completed the cleaning out of the courts. within the next couple of weeks they should be open for business downtown. right now, algiers is the closest area for civil district court. >> i have another question. mayor nagin: all right. >> my friend came from houston, and she was looking to try to find some help. in houston, they are doing the femur of vouchers -- fema vouchers. is there any kind of help her?
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mayor nagin: the best of eyes i could give to fema would be to see if she can qualify for one mayor nagin: the best of eyes i could give to fema would be to see if she can qualify for one of their programs. >> thank you. mayor nagin: she will give her friend that advice. >> i have been living in the city for over 30 years. i have a contract with the city for the last 10 years. i have a contract in force right now signed by you. to this day, we have not been contacted by fema for any type of tree work. not once. what chance does anybody have locally to get any work if they won't even contact me with a contract with you guys? i am disgusted. mayor nagin: all right, i understand. we have been hearing a lot of stories like this. we have turned over our entire authorized contract list to fema and to the corps of engineers. they give us assurances they would be contacting you guys. >> fema has never contacted me. mayor nagin: let me get, if you come aside, let's get your information and we will advocate on your behalf. >> good evening. i was in one of the ignored part of the city -- new orleans east. it costs us a lot to live. i want to know how long do you think we can all hold on paying these enormous housing notes and live elsewhere also? mayor nagin: it is my understanding that most of the ortgage companies have given
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everyone kind of a reprieve from paying their mortgages. that is going to end at some point. i'm not sure the exact eight it will end, i the 90 or 120 days from that particular point in time. after that, it is my understanding you have to start paying your house bills, and hopefully by then you will have some type of support either from the federal government, or a decent job that can cover those costs. hat is the best information we have to date. >> also, i understand you signed a proclamation, why are they not being put in? mayor nagin: we can help you with that. hey are supposed to be putting
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blue roofs everywhere in the city. we will see we can get you expedited and get that moved up on a list. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, everyone. i live in algiers. my area was one of the first reas you invited back to new orleans. but i still don't have any power. my wife has an asthmatic condition and is on a breathing machine. now she is back here, and has to deal with the stale air. the electrician has come out and done his work, tree people have done their work, i fed carpenters in and out, but i can't get the city to do any work. i don't know if someone is dropping the ball. mayor nagin: you need an inspector to come out that the
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power? >> that is what i am told. ayor nagin: give that lady right behind you, we would get that expedited. >> ok. i have been leaving messages. mayor nagin: well, give it to me now. >> if you can come out there and approve it, i will do that. mayor nagin: i will make sure orleans. that gets done. >> i will hold you to that. mayor nagin: i know you will. >> leave it here? mayor nagin: yes or. -- yes, sir. >> good evening. i have the utmost respect for you.
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to show a video and then go from there.
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>> to show a
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>> so our project seeks to answer three questions. to country commifments make a difference in terms of progress towards financial inclusion? to what degree to they advance inclusion? and what regulatory approaches do the best job? so we analyzed inclusion in nearly two different dozen nations that includes places sutches as brazil, nigeria, south africa, kneea and turkey. this week we haveo published our score card and our report. there are copies available for those of you here in the auditorium. for those watching the web casts you can down4r50d our
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report at brookings. we encourage you to read our report. if you have any comments or suggestions on it you can email us at fdip comments at brookings.edu. this is the first of three reports so we would welcome any input that you have. we will be kind of thinking about our methodology, our indicators, and our recommendations in terms of future reports so we would like to hear any suggestions that you have. we did get detailed comments from every country that was included in our report. we also talk with many leaders in the ngo world active on financial inclusion and we are very gratedful for their suggestion. to give you a sense of the our study our
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colleague will summarize the key findings. john is a nonresident senior fellow at brookings and a professor of electrical engineer, public policy and management. he has written extensively on technology, financial inclusion and the our colleague will summarize the key findings. john is a nonresident senior fellow at brookings and a devel then after john's presentation we will hear from several who will offer their suggestions on how to improve financial inclusion around the world. o i will turn it over to john. >> so thanks to all of you. i know there are many things you could be doing on a in washington re or somewhere else in the world there's also some other things you could be doing so we're very appreciative to take soim time out of the day to be with us. i'm going to spend about eight to ten minutes going over the highlights. echo, the objective
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is to evaluate financial inclusion as well as the progress in each of 21 countries. you can see the list up here. i won't read through them all but one kind of overarching characteristic you will notice is that this is a very diverse group of countries. diverse economically, geographicically, politically. we've got some small countries there, some enormous countries like india on this list as well. so we tried to -- we chose a list like this because this helps cast a wide net looking across such a broad array of countries we aren't limiting ourselves to one region of the world. we have -- these are the overall score card results ranked from top for kenya, south africa, brazil, rwanda and ueganda. overall are the
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scores. we also ranked each of these countries through each of four dimensions. so to measure financial inclusion we identified four key dimensions. overallountry
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increasingly important mechanisms for financial inclusion. just because of the complexity of the geoif i and the infrastructure in many places it will be a very long time if ever b you will see traditional bank branches bricks and more tar for many of the smaller villages in towns and some of these countries where some f many of these plays are covered or will be covered by good mobile phone service and that allows that to serve as a platform for financial transactions. a couple -- i will summarize five key findings. one country commitments matter. there are multinational financial inclusion networks such as the alliance for we've al inclusion which
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got the declaration for that. country that is have signed up are in most cases making good on the commitments associated with that. there are countries that have joined the better than cash alliance which is also been a critically important organization for promoting financial inclusion. so the countries that actively engage with those sorts of networks in general we found that those are extremely important and extremely effective in promoting inclusion. secondly, digital financial service ks accelerate financial inclusion. there's enormous advantages associated with digital and many environments. but that doesn't mean there aren't also concerns. for example, cyber security. t on balance we believe that digital financial transactions offer enormous advantages in terms of security, efficiency, costs efficiency, access
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locations and so on. so as those digital financial services become more common we believe that will have a positive feedback cycle with respect to promoting financial inclusion. third, geoif i generally matters less than policy legal and regulatory changes. that said we still observe regional trends. as i mentioned a moment ago, you see mobile money being much more common in places that lack as much of that digsal banking infrastructure whereas in laces with it more extensive infrastructure. you see mor mobile money playing less of a central role and correspondents playing a more central role. fourth, coordination among key players in the space is really important. clearly if you're looking at something like mobile money that impacts the telecommunications industry but also impacts banks and ministries of finance and things like that. so there are complex questions that then face governments and
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regulatory bodies and so on when you try to make sure that these service ks be provided, available, at reasonable costs and critically can be interoperable. for example, a consumer is not locked only into extending or receiving money from to and from people that happen to be customers of the same mobile phone network. so coordination is an area where it's extremely important for governments and also the private sector to be engaged. and then finally but last but certainly not least full financial inclusion cannot be achieved without addressing the gender gap. we're certainly not the first to recognize this. it's well recognized that there's a persistent and significant gender gap under which women are often more significantly more excluded from access to formal financial services than men. and of course you cannot have full financial inclusion unless
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you have financial inclusion for everybody including women. so closing that gender gap which unfortunately has not significantly appeared to close in the last couple of years in general is something that is really, really important. and the other financial point i will mention here is that it is often important to account for diverse cultural contexts. different countries have different sorts of infrastructures. so i will give an example. in the philippines pawn shops have become very important sort of physical locations for money transmissions. you can go to a pawn shop and give them money and they will transfer it to somebody else somewhere else who can pick it up somewhere else. and so different countries have different existing be structure that can leveraged. what works in one place may not be applicable in another place. so moving forward. as darrell mentioned we are
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just completing the first year of a three-year project. we are going to be publishing an annual report at the end of each project at the end of each year. so we started this one year ago. the report we piblished is the first of the reports we plan to publish another report a year from now and a third report a year after that. includes not only private sector companies includes organizations like the alliance for financial inclusion and btca and of course the governments themselves that are trying to work to promote financial inclusion. i will close by mentioning that we welcome feedback. we want feedback. any time you're trying to devise a scoring system there are choices that you make. it is impossible to design a
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system that is perfect. we think we've done a reasonably good job but we are also confident that we can do a better job. we would welcome feedback from the community on way that is we can improve our methodology and our analysis in the future so that we can have an even better product as we continue with this project. and we are also considering xpanding the scope of a number of countries beyond the 21 that we've identified in the first eport. so we would welcome suggestions on countries which people in the community believe are particularly important for us to consider in future rounds of the study. so with so we would welcome that i will i will ask our moderator and our panelists to come up and we will have what i'm sure will be a very interesting discussion on financial inclusion. so thank you so much for your time. [applause]
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>> thank you. looking at a very long and skinny room here. there's ab already -- seeing one of my challenges is spotting you in the back. we are going to insist that you participate actively in this. will take the classroom approach. my name is shawn and i'm the world trade editor of the financial times. i cover the international end of economics here from washington and get very i want rested in development and things like financial inclusion something i've been learning a lot. one of the many things i've been learning a lot about since i moved here in january from our head quarters in london.
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very happy to be up here moderating this discussion also as i learned over the last few days as i was getting in touch, i'm the stranger on the stage. these are all friends and colleagues. they all know each other from the world of financial inclusion. i'm the one unknown component here. i feel a bit like the stranger invited to the thanksgiving ginner for the family here. i will do my best to be provocative as a result. let me just quickly run through our panel and then move on to our discussion and get out of the way and really let these people who are some of the leading experts on the subject share their knowledge and their thoughts on the back of this very good new report. starting all the way on my left
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. lee ora. she is the lead economist at the development research group at the world bank also the keeper of something called the global fin desm report which is has everything and anything you ever want to know about financial inclusion. also the data that the brookings report is based on. she also, if you go visit her, will give you the little data book on financial inclusion, which has just about every statistic you ever want to know about financial inclusion in the world. next to her is jerry grossman. jerry is a senior advocacy and regulatory specialist. next to him karen miller who is hief knowledge and officer for
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women's world banking very well placed to talk about that gender gap that john mentioned. next, government relations specialist. better than cash alliance which is a u.n. based alliance. up early this morning officer f women's world banking very well placed to talk about that gender gap that john mentioned. the train down from knox. next to me lore eta. i thought we would start with le ora who could give us the 30,000 foot view on what's happening in the world of financial inclusion. some astonishing things happen in recent years. something like 700 million people have gained bank accounts but then there's also some remarkable challenges. so why don't you give us that
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broad view. >> thank you. and thank you for a nice presentation of the report. so what is the land scape? the landscape today is we find in 2014 about 62 prtsd of adults around the world have an account either at a bank or financial institution or the mobile money provider. increase of 700 million adults since 2001. globally only about 12% of adults have an account. however the number over 12% in subsaharan africa where 45% of those adults this is their only account that they have. now have five african countries including from the report tanzania, kenya, ugeda where more people have an account than traditional bank. so clearly this has changed technology is changing the financial land scape. but not -- coverage is not only
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important for mobile money accounts but also permits the growth of banks. in china the government moved out digital payments for government payments. and they set up over half a million mom and pop shops now distribute that money and take deposits and provide banking services. so the new technology is driving money accounts, driving bank agents, card based accounts. saying that in 2017 will probably be asking questions about products we haven't even yet dreamed up. why does this all matter? yesterday i logged on, set up auto bill pay for my kids' school fees this year. it was convenient. but for tens of millions of adults around the world, women these are game changers. for example, in bangladesh i've
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been working with factories helping them automate their gam changers. for example, in bangladesh i've been working with factories helping them automate their women tell these us how on payday their mother in-law would wait to take their pay away. now they can't. their husbands don't keep track of their overtime and now they're saving a little bit every month towards expenses towards their children. payments offer privacy and control over money. especially wage payments that people never had before. it's also safer. in xample, a study funded the u.s. found that after the u.s. began making electronic payments crime fell in the midwest. it also is critical for women's economic empowerment. e study in kenya and elsewhere show that giving women an account where to keep her savings gives her influence over household budget decisions. she's able to discuss at more op tune times.
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spending on nut rishes food. often occur savings. through auto deposits. about 401(k) plans. it takes away the need to wait in line. take that extra literal steps to redeposit the money into a savings account. you don't have the tempttation of spending the money because the money is taken off the top. doing a field study where we offered up a government work -- one of the first countries to commit to digitizing their government wage payments. we find public workers almost all report putting their wages into an account and offer an opt out savings 10% of salary. now 18 months later we're seeing where the the money come from? a drop in saveings, gifts to family and friends which is involuntary, and hair product
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consumption. finally, it allows people to build credit histories. one of the most exciting is the development of credit scores based on payment history. the same way over the past ten years banks and other lenders have been showing if you receive remittance payments or wage payments, this shows in the future you're able to make that payback of loan payments. so increasingly now tens of millions of new people from the government and the private sector, by digitize thirg remittance payments, suddenly they have a payment history. in kenya and elsewhere the data is being used by small business owners to allow them to get appropriate credit. however, certainly we need to highlight that there are in many countries
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we're dealing with the fact that especially woman don't have any form of identification which is necessary to simply open an account. in bangladesh the employer records count as identification for a small account at the bank or another financial get ution but we can't the mobile money account because to buy a card requires documentation. -- and that's what they don't have. we have the technological infrastructure. also gets to basic education making sure people understand their pin numbers and to keep them private. in south africa tragically the number of women we spoke to who would give their pin numbers to strangers to withdraw the money for them because they didn't feel comfortable using the machine themselves. i will end with a new favorite story. a colleague was in talking to a school teacher who told her she
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paid every month by the government in cash. so for the first two days of every month she closes the school in the village to travel to the largest city to collect her money. complaining to us that about the danger. the security risk of walking around traveling with a wad of cash in her pocket. by digitizing her wage payments the school will be open for an month. o days a so pointed it's a mens toward an end. it enables people to have a safe place for their money and can other month. so effects as well. >> there's reason number one why we need more financial inclusion. more school for kids. on the agenda at the u.s. treasury. tell us a little bit more about why it's important for you at the treasury. >> thank you. and thank you for having me here. i was asked to come and talk about why does treasury care about this and what are we
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doing about it. and i'm pleased to say that this is definitely a very high priority for treasury. financial ause is a good thing in its own right but numerous which is safe guarding from abuse. when people are
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not able to be accounted for when it comes to money laundering and terrorist financing. and this is a huge problem all over the world. so treasury is very keen to see everyone involved in some sort of formal financial service. and when i say that i don't mean that we want to see everyone forced into a big fancy bank account. if there are services that are meeting the needs of individuals especially low income individuals in developing countries and they aren't formal we don't ban them. we formalize them so they are actually protected and that policy makers have more nformation to go on. the other aspect is that we are very much advocating technology enabled financial inclusion. new technologies are obviously
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rapidly changing the face of financial services everywhere. enabling service providers not only to reach into remote areas and get up to scale much faster. but also it allows service to viders to come up with far more responsive innovative services that actually meet the needs of individual consumers. of course as i mentioned before, means that these services and transactions are traceable and accountable not just for anti-money laundering purposes but for consumer protection. so where does treasury fit in with this whole agenda? from an international perspective we're very heavily involved at the global policy level whether it's with the g-20's global partnership for financial inclusion where we're working very closely with all of their subgroups particularly on markets and payment systems,
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technology enabled solutions, customer protection, remittances, and the role of global standard setting bodies. we work very closely with all of our friends on a number of these issues to make sure that they are taking account into needs of e particular low income financially excluded individuals. we are also heavily involved, which a lot of people don't fully realize, but treasury has an office of technical assistance that works needs of low income very closely bilaterally with a number of their counter parts around the world whether central banks finance ministries, what have you, on strengthening their own financial systems whether it's a regulatory perspective or a government accounting perspective. and so the good news is that the importance of financial inclusion and the importance of digital financial inclusion are broadly accepted around the world.
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which we can't sniff at. this is real been a phenomena over the last few years. we're arguing these points just a few years ago and now everyone agrees. the challenge now with everyone agreeing is that the environment is now changing for them and they're saying wait a minute, we need help. how do we do all this? yes you're right. but how do we do it? so there is a growing need for assistance to a number of policy makers and regulators and supervisors in the emerging markets in a number of areas. and some of the key ones i will mention are supervision of financial service providers whether banks or nonbanks. the traditional supervisor or regulator has been working with banks only with prodentially sound regulations. now we have all these new players who ro digital payment
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players and are playing an increasing role. we need to come up with new rules and ways of operating to deal with these kinds of players. supervision of new types of digital currencies. built coin is getting all the -- bit coin is getting the press but the whole issue of digital currencies is just going to keep growing. and supervisors need help in figuring out how to do this. enacting a risk-based approach. those who are steeped know that the financial action task force has stressed repeatedly that they expect countries to meet their needs in terms of ant money laundering but that they are allowed to do so in a risk-based approach. so a lot of countries they say yes ok we believe you but how do we do that? increasing 's conversation.
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new digital transactions is another area that policy makers are having to think about pooled caurnlt deposit inshunes. most take for granted that our bank accounts are insured. well, you've got these new players with keeping their funds in trust accounts that are doing all sorts of phenomenal things and expanding the world of services for people. but there might not be deposit insurance. so more regulators are thinking they've got to figure this out. and even fdic is looking at the role of prepaid cards in the u.s.
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then of course digitization plays a huge role. so as i said, there's a lot of enthusiasm which is great to see. a lot of acknowledgment. and a lot -- growing commitments which is fantastic but now those need to be followed up with action. and that is a great aspect of is report that's come out is being able to measure how they've done and where what other areas that we and the rest of this community can support them. teed you up beautifully. now is the time for action. you are the action man. u're one of the people governments can pick up and call when they need help on this. talk a little bit about what
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you're hearing from government and a little bit more about the call when they need help on this. talk a little bit about what you're hearing from government and a little bit more about the better than cash alliance and thank you. s do a really useful tool. when we speak to government officials they want to know how others are doing and whether what are the interesting lessons they can learn. so this is a very useful to kno others are doing and whether what are the interesting lessons they can learn. so this is a very useful tool. maybe a word about alliance. a partnership of international organizations that are all commitmented to the shift from cash to digital payments as means to expand financial inclusion but also achieve other benefits. what we see is that there's a surge as loretta just mentioned as interest in the issue of digital financial services and the benefits that government can reap out of that transition from cash didgetal pailts. very often when we speak to governments it often comes from
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one aspect. mentioned the issue of ransparency or security. and when governments deal with how to design the best digitization scheme they think of one aspect. along the path they realize there are more benefits. so there could be a payment scheme that could deliver security but also transparency and of course the issue of financial inclusion. so one of the things many struggle, they're interested in learning from other governments or in getting some developing this report is to understand how to make the most out of those programs. and many of them speak to us about their issue of eliminating ghost salaries or recipients for cash transfer programs and others. what we are trying to do as an alliance that brings together governments and companies and international organizations is to help or support governments with the issue of developing
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digital systems. it's a bit of a mouthful so i will explain. in order tor digitization for expanding financial services for everyone in the economy meaning people, economies, government ngo's local organizations all of those need to be able not only receive payments but also make payments initially. so it's not enough for governments to make you digital transfer into there but the ideal scenario would be for you to be able to use the account further on and make payments and receive payments. so what we see -- and that's a clear request for government -- is they're looking for a convening authority that will support them in having a collaborative approach where government companies international organizations donors in a certain country work together to develop these digital payment eco system where everyone can make and
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receive payments. and that will ultimately deliver what we are trying to do and to achieve, which is the financial inclusion for all. i immediately thought about place cause india is a where we see this happening. and there are many people working on it right now. a year ago we saw the governor launching a new financial inclusion scheme and in the year's time only opened over 170 million accounts. but the interesting thing with india is the government is trying to go beyond just opening accounts but making sure those accounts are used so they don't remain dormant they have where accompanied it with mention schemes and making sure those who now have
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accounts or those households use them to make payments, receive payments. that's where people are included and don't only have an account on paper. >> we'll come back to i couldia accounts or later on. -- india later on. fascinating. i think the figures i looked at 175 million new accounts but them have a 0 balance, which is -- raidses all soshts of interesting questions. i want to come to you next and he question of gender. talking a couple days ago you mentioned the fact that one of the things you guys are working to improve is the fact that a lot of effort to push financial inclusion actually managed to exclude women in a way or to make it harder for women to open bank accounts. so talk to us about why that gender gap exists and why it is
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-- those efforts to address it aren't always working. >> thank you. and i think the really interesting thing that we need to understand when we're talking about women and it cial inclusion is that does not require the key a major overhaul to what they're doing. it just requires some tweaks. and it just requires frankly understanding what women want. there are very few industries i don't think that we would look at that are targeting women that wouldn't a major actually understand what women's needs are so that they can develop a product to serve women's needs. specifically when we think
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about services in the report there's a lot of talk about mobile money accounts. but when we think about ok what are women's needs how do we address them, i would say that savings is such a critical component of this. and we recently did some work looking at the landscape for digital savings, what was happening out there, what good examples there were and how we could reach scale. and when you think about savings and you think about what women need, they want convenience, they have such busy lives between being the manager of the household and working. they don't have time and we've heard this over and over again in the last 35 years of doing research on women's lives that they don't have time to go stand in line at a bank branch to deposit their money. or they're so far away that the money it would take to take a us to that bank branch was
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actually more than they were deficitting. so digital financial services has an incredible potential to serve women's needs for that convenience. it also helps address security. so services has an incredible potential to serve women's needs for that convenience. it also women as she was talkin about carrying money about carrying money about that can help address that security issue. and confidentiality. a woman wants to know that the money that she earns is safe. that she can control her own ssets and not have to be sharing and telling her friends, relatives, what she is doing with her money. so setting up savings accounts in a digital environment i think are the critical product to help with financial inclusion. so when you think about the
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context one of my favorite expressions now that just came about our team was in mall owie and they said that savings and agent banking go together like fema and relish, probably the quivalent of peanut butter and jelly. so populations are really starting to recognize what delivering a bank product to a oman is going to do for her. and so we are absolutely xcited about the opportunities that digital financial services has for women. but fundamentally they need to start with the understanding of women's needs and need to be
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having gender data so that you can actually measure what is happening with your women clients in the research that we did on digital savings and landscape so few companies were actually disaggregating their data by gender so how could they tell what the difference in behavior was and whether they were actually serving a client base appropriately? so -- which leaves you with the message start with understanding women, you'll find that product design comes into play. it will be a well designed product. that will help men also. so one of the great things we always find is if you design a product for women, men will like it also. if you don't take into account women's needs, they're not going to pick it up. >> that sounds like a rule for ife.
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jerry, from the industry side, you are, to get a bit corny, you put the mobile in mobile money. i'm struck in the discussion we had a couple days ago there's still some pretty serious regulatories out there and challenges in terms of rolling this out in countries. and i'm also struck by the scale of this challenge. the reality is one in four, one in 3-1/2 of the world's population still doesn't have a bank account or access to financial services. so just walk me through from the telecommunications industry perspective what are the challenges that you see still? >> thanks. one of the benefits of being the last person on the panel speak is i get to listen to the insights and then comment on them. so thank you for giving me that
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opportunity. just turning back to the report we only had it up a short time but if you look at the list, one thing i noticed right away is as they mentioned, a very diverse set of countries ranging from middle to upper income countries to low income countries. generally speaking there's a strong correlation between level of economic development and financial inclusion. but what you see in this case that the number one, four, and five countries are all low income countries. and the countries around them re much wealthier that the num. now, why is that? n all three, financial inclusion is being driven by mobile operator led mobile money schemes. at least in significant part. and i think that's a very important thing inclusion is being to remember. you were talking about the fact that only 2% of the accounts around the world are mobile money based.
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even in subis a sharon africa we're only looking at 12%. so there's a huge opportunity to grow and a big part of the issue is the regulatory environment. subsaharan africa has been higher letches of growth because mosh countries there have taken an enabling approach than in other parts of the world. and the truth is that while we often think of subsaharan africa as a low income area there are significant differences in the levels of economic development both as a whole and among countries within zpw is a harne africa that are achieving high levels of not just adoption of mobile money but actual active usage. but so if we look at the top ten countries in the world with respect to not just mobile money adoption and active
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you have four countries in southern africa, four countries in east africa. you also have west africa. but not just an african story. we also have south america which is which was highlights as a region that because they had more traditional banks might be less welcoming to mobile money. so i really want to emphasize the fact that while mobile money has really developed much more quickly in subsaharan africa this is no longer just a kenyan story or even jist an east african story and it's not even a subsaharan african story. with the right environment mobile money can develop in diverse economic and geographical environments around the world. now, why is it important though
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that you have an enabling versus a nonenabling environment? today they have a mobile money tracker and we track all the untries around the world which have at least one service. that can be a bank or led by some form of a third party entity neither a bank nor mobile operator. today just over half of the countries that do offer mobile money products have what we consider to be an enabling have service. that can be a bank or led by some regulatory environment where there's a level playing field where banks and mobile operators can all directly offer mobile money services. it's one where the service ks be provided through a broad agent network where customers can be registered at an agent, an go and cash in and cash
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out. it's an environment where there's a recognition that while you do need pru dential regulations in place to safeguard funds and ensure the protection, you differentiate between mobile money and banking because the risks are different. it's an environment in which interoperability while very important is not mandated at an inappropriate time or using a model nots going to be commercially out. it's viable. not just in world subsaharan africa or in successful markets but if you look at the countries and all the countries with a nonenabling not just environmen customer usage with respect to useage is over three times in environments that we consider to be enabling. and as i said the top ten countries with respect to active accounts as a percentage of the population are all country which is have an enabling regulatory approach and mobile operators are leading and driving financial inclusion with respect to mobile money.
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so i think that's a very important point. this to become banks versus mno's types of scenarios. you hair this a lot. sometimes they're sexettives. personally, -- competitive. i think this is the wrong idea and wrong approach. the potential for digital financial services and for mobile financial services is huge. the pie is very big and just starting to get opened up. if they seize these opportunities there's potential to grow that pie and to target a huge unbanchingde and underserved market not currently viable. it's not viable for traditional banking institutions. mobile operators have the infrastructure and they can build the mobile money infrastructure. these are the rails. this is the way to bring people out of the informal sector
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where they're saving money in their homes under their in esses, investing livestock other ways that people who don't have access or don't have access that works to formal financial institutions. you can bring them in. once that money is in the it can be ector, intermediate which can contribute to economic growth. beyond that there are a number of other major benefits because have the opportunity to provide credit. they have the opportunity to provide savings. and the banks are offering these services. insurance they have the opportunity to provide savings. and the banks are offering these services. insurance services. looking just at one example. many of you are familiar with the service. this is a tieup between services but offered is a banking service just at one exa.
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many of you are familiar with the service. this is a tieup between services but offered is a banking service by the commercial bank of be intermediate which can contribute to economic growth. beyond that there are a number of other major benefits africa. cba was not focused on having lots of small accounts. once they said up the service they went from 89,000 loan accounts to 897,000 loan accounts in one year. and deposits from the service in one year reached 24 billion kenyan shillings, about $that billion. most is coming from under the matt resses. service now up the focused on the market providing loans up to $10,000. so insurance market as well you're seeing 17 million policies. five services with over 1 million customers. so i believe we shouldn't focus on banks versus mobile operators but the opportunities that both can work together to help facilitate inclusion. >> mobile network operators.
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i just want to come back to something, india is an interesting case study. i'm going throw back to you and really ask, ok, india comes up in the report of a country doing interesting u stuff. so do a few others. but when you look out there, who are the -- which are the countries leading the way now in financial inclusion? you're not allowed to say kenya. >> exactly. so i will talk about brazil, for example. back to the payment story. it's the egg and building a financial infrastructure. look at latin america from 2011 we've seen double digit growth. across the region really anchored by brazil and mexico.
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again, i don't have evidence but it just perception is enormously high rates of digital wage payments government transfer payments. 88% of adults in brazil receive a government payment directly into a account in bank or financial institution. an average 40% of adults are receiving a digital wage payments. as a result latin america is the highest region globally of people reportedly swiping their atm card to make a payment. so you have many countries where adults say they swipe a debity card to make a payment. the government taking a lead in digitizing payments they're doing it for selfish reasons. the recrnt study that could save the government.
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i was working where i met a factory owner who pays $2.5 million every month in $5 bills so he has to close his factory for days to make these payments. so it's benefiting the employer and government. as a result you have all these people with accounts and the financial sector is responding by creating this pos infrastructure. just on india. the index as well we find the highest dormancey rates in the world. but i would say this is an opportunity. we met women who had their virts account. now the challenge for india is to step up and create a purpose continuing to digitize government payments by the private sector. by making it easier for people to keep their money in an account by developing -- one co government nteresting thing also that the
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account who say they have an atm card is very, very low. again making these accounts more convenient for people to use and keep their money there by encouraging debit cards and point of sale. account they've made a huge commitment. i'm sure you could argue that there's a degree of top down mandate activity going on which always has mixed success in the marketplace. india heir credit, acknowledged not everyone wants a bank account. could be mobile operators or other types of nonbank service providers. so those 11 i think they were licensed just in the last week or so. so india deserves a lot of praise for acknowledging that customer choys is just as -- choice is just as important.
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i totally agree with the comment about not just government payments but also the ability to have other places to use your account to use your card the whole march nt acceptance side of things. this is one area where my colleagues are doing a great deal of work with indian agencies on putting together an extenseive acceptance network for just this purpose. >> do you want to talk about the example? how does that look from the mobile perspective? >> sure. my prior life before i joined i worked on regulations looking at branchless banking, mobile money. whatever you want to call them. different laws and regulations related to financial inclusion. and india you've seen over time they have continually loosened
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up their approach but it's been a very, very slow progression. so in 2006 i believe india initially released their egulations on what they called business correspondents which were essentially banking agents. and when they first released them they were very strict. i believe they limited them to nonprofits and mabel a couple other actors. most were not permitted at all to provide services. it was extremely limited. then they said ok we'll let certain companies offer these services. then they said ok now we're going to let different shops in the community do this. so slowly over time they started opening it ument but it was always limited. then they came up with some form of payment provider which was similar to a mobile money provider but had very strict limits on the types of services and value that is could be transmitted. i believe there was even a pro
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bigs on cashing out. it didn't have the full functionality. so now they've come to the recognition over time that these efforts needed to be widend even more. so now they've come up with the a lot s banks which have more functionality. and they called them payments banks so you may think that they might intermediate funds the way a typical bank would do but they don't. they really operate generally like a mobile money provider in that they can collect funds but those have to be placed in banks or in actually ink 75% needs to be placed functionality. so now in indian treasury bills or bonds. so you see over time that to a started to move mow more and more open approach. now you've seen five or six of them have mobile operators either leading the theme or very actively involved. so i think there's a lot of promise going forward for mobile operate tors help contribute. >> correct me if i'm wrong india now accounts for one in
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five? it's happening. and they have 90 o 0 million cell phones in circulation as well. and according to the book on financial inclusion just 2.5% of the population now has a mobile account which is pretty astonishing. since you were the man who brought up india do you want to come back? >> i want to mention one comment. what we're seeing is this scheme is just one year old and progress has been made including now with the chattering of cooking oil gas subsidies into those accounts has already achieved over $2 billion savings for the government i'm sure we're going to see more and more as the government sees they are making their operation morse efficient. also the issue, down the line there are people managing their financial lives. i remember myself visiting a
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all corner shop in india walking to the store this woman who had an account she walked in the store, asked the person who was an agent to cash out the money and then she cashed out and asked him if she could pay and buy products. so i asked her why don't you just pay for the goods transferring from your account to his account? she said i don't know. i mean, when you pay for something you pay in cash. right? and i asked him why don't you accept payment? why don't you encourage her. i don't know. i haven't thought about it. o there's an idea. she still makes her payments with cash because this is the way people are used to. so i think it's a little premature to judge after one year the scales when we're talking about india are mind boggling. talking about the biggest financial inclusion scheme, the
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biggest in the world talking about the biggest the scale is so big it's going to take a while to see the results. but we're already seeing a lot of improvement. >> to open it up to the floor shortly. but i have one last question from the podium here that i'm going to reserve the privilege to ask first. so if you can get ready, we do have microphones that come through the room when we move to the floor. i want to go back to something lee ora said in 2017 you're going to be considering products that you don't even know about right now. so i want to get each of you to think about the future of financial inclusion and about the cool new thing. be bit coin? is it going to be some kind of other sovereign digital be ncy we're going to
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talking about? the things as you think about financial inclusion what are the cool new things that you think about? he future of financial just the cost of low cost smart phones. five years ago we would have never anticipated the number of smart phones in the developing countries right now and the numbers are just growing amazingly so. and yes the issue of digital rrencies is definitely going to be talking grow. but i don't think bit coin is
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going to be the answer. i think there are going to be other areas. i think central banks are going to start looking at how to issue their own digital currencies. so instead of minting a bunch of quarters they're minting digital equivelents of those. so i think those are some of the innovations i think we're definitely going to be seeing. we're already seeing any number of applications out there on financial education, managing your money, et cetera. and like many things these are going to transfer into low cost, low income regions and 'll find the same thing in other places. it's very hard to anticipate the future because new things are coming up every day. > at this point i i owe you an
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apology. i promised you i wouldn't ambush you on stage. innovations? the center for technology inno shation here we're talking about. >> i agree with -- i was scared i would be left. the number of oversized smart phones was absolutely mind boggling. i think -- and the question is it will blur mobile money accounts from bank accounts because people i surveyed was saying i use my smart phone to make bank transaction. o they're harnessing the convenience. i think there's an exciting growth in the use of digit dwral payments provide services. the prepaid electricity
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minutes. basically, other service infrastructure providers will invest because people will prepay on their phone. for crease of payments sanitation. the number of use. we were visiting. the toilet you make a small payment for it to be open which the types of services that mobile money really kind of started out as to moving
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into what karen was talking about providing real savings. we have for example an example where tanzania decided to take all the interest they earned and pay it out to all the their users. small customers their agents any user that had money in the system. all of a sudden people who never could have afforded to have a bank account and to earn savorings were suddenly getting interest. a small of interest sure but something. and if nothing else that helps with respect to inflation and maintaining the value. savings credit and moving for f some of the small short-term small emergency loan products to things more like microfinance, small and medium interprize access to financial services. there's a long way to go. cross border we're seeing a lot of international remittance products not just from wealthier countries to low income but now seeing with
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mobile money a lot of connections particularly within subsaharan africa where you're seeing different countries interconnecting services either with e same provider or different to be able to provide access in a region of the world where borders are kind of arbitrary and people have been raveling and working and living across borders back to loretta. i owe living across borders for many, many years long before mobile money came along. first i want to come you one. i did want to make the point when following up that we talk about financial inclusion, we tend to think but just the regulator the reality is that certainly from a policy perspective and
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fostering the growth of this industry and furtherering financial inclusion involves multiple levels of government and involvement. and we can't forget that. so a government might make a commitment to financial inclusion. but if it's only the financial regulator they aren't the ones who are responsible for customer id's in that country. there are multiple agency that is come up with customer id's. there needs to be broad coordination between all those players. in many countries in the middle east and north africa other government departments have guardianship laws that prevent opening up their own bank account without the permission of a male relative. so if we don't deal with those folks then all these other great initiatives are not going to get anywhere. then of course to her point about all the different ways hat these services can be used
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for education, energy, all sorts of things. so we mustn't forget that this is not just about talking to the finance guy. it cuts across all areas of a country's policy making environment. when you get the central banks talking to the communications ministries, talking to the rest anyone who has worked in the developing world knows that is not always easy. i cut you off. i'm sorry. >> you didn't cut me off. that's ok. i think what's really exciting for us is what technology is going to allow in order to deliver for what women need at each stage of their life. i think there's a real opportunity for multiproduct offerings that are delivered
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through digital platforms that we've talked about savings, credit products, insurance. and that could be health insurance products, could be agricultural insurance products. all of those that can be livered for a woman to address her needs for convenience, security, and confidentiality we have the opportunity now. so it's a matter of investment by the financial institutions and mno's to think through this. it's the donor communities saying ok if we're going to be investing in certain projects, they need to take into account the needs of women. and of course it is the regulatory community. we used the word game changer before in terms of dimmingtal. but i would argue that the regulators have a game changing role rilinge right now.
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and if they think about what is best for their entire all of the citizens from this countries. >> we'll close with you before we go to the floor here. what was the cool new financial inclusion product at 6:00 a.m. this morning? >> i cannot predict what will but i can big, predict where it's going to come from. i'm certainly it's going to come from one of the countries surveyed in this report. one of the important parts of our work is facilitating knowledge exchange between government. and when they come to us and ask us what others are doing they're not asking us to know what is the u.s. or germany doing. they want to know what other countries that are blah zill or china. and -- brazil or china.
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i think that's where the big next innovation will come from. this is where innovation is now happening because of all the -- because technology is now erupting. and responding to needs that been there for a while. and suddenly there is this surge of new innovation but also government leadership that is trying to facilitate that happening. and with the incredible spirit of entrepreneurship that i'm sure all of my fellow panelists see and meet when we visit those countries, i'm sure at's where it's going to happen. >> great. let's open it up to the floor. if you can put your hands up. if i can ask you to kind of limit it to questions to be snappy and quick and to the point. and also to let me know which member of the panel you would like to direct it to. to introduce yourself. we'll take these questions and kind of groups of three and then come back to the panel for
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responses. we'll start with the lady in the second row. >> i would like to address my question, a question not a comment,. and it goes to the issue of that both you and hi colleague at the department of treasury. where i work in the office of terrorist financing and financial crimes dealing with new payment meth odds and financial inclusion primarily. when i hear you talking about the digital financial sector, you're primarily talking about, it seems to me, the mobile technology and the rails. i am wondering to what extent you are also working with governments or conceptualizing the notion of digital identification as an integral component of the digital financial sector. when you talk about india, for
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instance, it's my understanding that the biometric system was a crucial component of the financial inclusion effort across the different governments that have come into place that this isn't just a new financial inclusion initiative that in fact it was revived in part because of the new emphasis on financial inclusion. but when she was talking about kind of payment histories, for receiving ther payments from an employer or government payments. in point of fact those are points that can be used as in part identifiers to build up to identity so the government when it makes payments for instance in the digital landscape knows who it's giving it to. and the institution also is able to. so i'm a little concerned about
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to what degree they're stove piping in a separation of the issue of the digital identity and know your customer. loretta very articulateically expressed the view that was an integral component. i'm wondering if that's a broad understanding. >> all right. digital identity which is a question in the news vie [inaudible] the leak. > thank you. i listened and thought it was great. i think we have to return to the report a little bit. the notion that i want to return to is the notion of in clusion, access, and use. we haven't had much at the panel level about how can we improve use. because even though we say that 30% or 32% of people use a
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mobile product or mobile account once in three months, it means that a lot of people don't. and we've registered them. so the question for me is what would you contribute to this sort of improvement in use that we need as relates to the india example. but we haven't heard much. and what we haven't heard much of is actually the customer. except karen came in with specific customer group and then what we also haven't heard much of the people should implement this the financial providers. so if we can just get a few remarks from the whole panel. >> behind you there were -- there. >> we could predict that i'm going to ask about consumer
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protection. so i would like to -- when i look at the report i see that it scores very well actually very poor in consumer protection. so just to comment on what needs to happen what do you see at is happening and what needs to happen in that area. >> ok. >> i'm not an expert in this issue. i just want to say that we don't prescribe digital financial services. we don't tell the government to do this or that. what we've seen working with is that there are different solutions that work for different contexts with different infrastructure. so in some cases that's what worked. in other cases there are other solutions. you mentioned's that i spoke
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about mobile financial services. there's definitely a -- there's also other solutions that are working very well in other context in other countries. so definitely there's the issue that she can address better. but it doesn't have to be limited to necessarily mobile solutions out there that work well. >> you want to jump in on this here. i'm struck by one of the things that came up in the initial discussion was talking about the regulatory barriers to getting -- or was it you that mentioned the need for an id to get a sim card in some countries is a barrier to financial inclusion. i mean, for you, jerry, this question of identity how do you hink about it? >> i think it's a challenge. the issue is a real challenge
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cause you have a balancing act. loretta talked about it earlier. i want to emphasize that back in 2012 they changed from recommending or act. loretta talked about it allowin risk-based approach to mandating a risk-based approach. not only is it something you should do. it's something you must do. you have to look at the different risks within the financial sector. different types of providers, products, customers. and you need to develop a risk-based approach. only by doing that can you dedicate different resources and different levels to different types of risks based on the actual risks present there. so the question is how do you develop a risk-based and proportional kyc framework so that you mitigate the major risks while also not intentionally preventing low income people from accessing the financial sector?
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this gives me a chance for a shameless plug because we just published a new report, a technical paper is on proportio kyc. and it addresses the specific issue in the context of how regulators and assessors looking at this issue can try to address and create proportional anti-money laundering. it was just published. happy to talk about it more. but i think that if you have a look at the report i'm happy to discuss it further. > just to add to that. one major challenge in a lot of countries, everyone looks at india and they see this digital i.d. with biometrics and they the answer. the reality is that every country has multiple forms of
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id's already in existence. some of them digitized on data not., some of them i was speaking with the world bank guy who is going to put out the wdr shortly. he mentioned either 76% or in tal -- i apologize i can't remember -- already have some form of digital different d. the problem that you find in a lot of countries is that you multiple i.d.'s that no one has oorksess to. you've got voters rules, birth certificates registries, school registries, can municipal redge dense uies. and either these don't provide electronic access or they just don't provide access to anyone. so you've got financial service providers that want to be able to use this information but they don't have access. so that comes back to some of the coordination needed amongst
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the different levels of government. >> let's go to this question. dormancey by the lot of t you see in a countries. >> i think we touched on some of the larger ones encouraging payments, the receipt of painlts and encouraged the sending. -- payments. half a billion account holders are city paying their school fees in cash. so this is simply low hanging fruit that hopefully the markets will reply to. i also think there's an elephant of corner which is encouraging merchant acceptance of payments. it's one thing to say i never thought about it. but they say i'm not formalizing anything. i have an electronic track record the tax authority will be on my doorstep tomorrow. you hear the surveys of small merchanlts 70% report i do my
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accounting in my head. so who knows how many different they have. but this is a tremendous challenge globally. i think this is also really critical to expanding use. this challenge globally. i think this is also really critical to expanding use. figuring out how to encourage erchants to accept payments. >> thanks for asking that question. in response also to what was that's the usage through the lens of digital payments. but when we think about once again the broader set of financial products whether delivered via digital channel or not how do we increase that usage. nd i think one of the elements that we certainly need to look at is what is the corresponding financial education and consumer marketing that goes along with a product.
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so when it is a savings account how do you encourage behavior and educate? a certain amount of money every week i am going to be able to save for my children's school fees or my child's wedding in two years. how do you integrate the education that encourages that usage to drive the behavior and adoption that you want and what is going to be beneficial for the client? so i think we do need to look at the education element. and then also -- and we certainly find this when it comes to women. how a product actually is marketeded. we are working on an insurance product in morocco right now. and it was actually a very good well designed health insurance
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product and when we went in to do the market research with clients and we started describing the product, everyone's eyes lit up. and they're like that would be amazing if we had a product like that. and we said, well, you do have a product already just like that. t because the consumer education, the marketing of the product was so complicated -- and we all know when you're talking about insurance it is very complicated. but basically taking a step back and revising how that product was communicated to linalts has increased the -- increased the claims for that product significantly. so once again sometimes it is just some of those tweaks that you need to make in order to increase yugse. >> jerry do you want to jump it just some of those tweaks that you need to make in order to
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increase yugse. >> jerry do you want in? also let's of customer protection. >> sure. so first pivot to this question usage. you need rst of all on how we e product. e product that so if you just focus on getting someone a bank account but it's not an account that they can use, then what type of financial inclusion are we really talking about? if our panelists have said you have to travel a long way. if there are monthly fees. if it's not an account that they can use, then what type of financial inclusion are we really talking about? if our panelists have said you have to travel a long way. if there are monthly fees. if there's a zero balance or low balance, people aren't going to want to use that count it is dormant. so all the folks are looking at human centered design in the types of works going on. and i think that's all the folk human centered design in the types of works going on. and i think that's a really important part of it as well. trying to understand what the true needs are and working with the financial service providers to develop products that meet the actual needs of the underserved.
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turning to consumer protection. i know this is often an issue that is treated from the perspective of regulators only. i certainly believe that has the functionality to the people who have the regulators have a very but i would like to talk about something that they gsma is doing in this state. in november of last year, they launched the code of conduct. and it was endorsed by all the major mobile network operator groups that were providing mobile money services. so when you think about vodafone, orange, although of them have endorsed this initiative. -- all of them have endorsed this initiative. the code of conduct itself is a set of eight high-level principles of which several of them are specifically focused on protection of consumers. the first issue is in regards to safeguarding customer funds. the last three issues are all very consumer protection specific. focusing osc