BACKGROUND

HARNESSING THE POTENTIAL OF FINTECH IN DEEPENING FINANCIAL INCLUSION: PRACTICAL REGULATORS EXPOSITIONS

Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) member countries represent diversity in terms of geography, socioeconomic development, cultural context, and levels of financial inclusion. This necessitates a focused regional and country-based approach in coming up with policy solutions to address financial inclusion challenges. Member countries in their financial inclusion journey have complex challenges and priorities to be addressed and need innovative policy responses to advance their financial inclusion objectives.

Knowledge Exchange Program-2, organized jointly with the Bank of Thailand (BoT) was a follow-up to the first Knowledge Exchange Program organized in November 2019 in Malaysia. The Knowledge Exchange Program was originally conceptualized from the demand of AFI member institutions for a platform of cross-learning among the member institutions who have similar context, interest and priorities for developing policy actions on specific topic and issues through AFIs unique peer learning platform which supports in developing practical policy interventions.

Knowledge Exchange Program-2 facilitated crosslearning among participating member institutions on e-KYC and Digital ID, Open Banking and Open API, and Data Privacy and Protection. It focused on sharing learnings and experiences between developing and developed country financial regulatory policy-making institutions. Knowledge Exchange Program-2 is aligned with the Sochi Accord on FinTech for Financial Inclusion, adopted by the AFI Membership in September 2018.1 The accord calls for systematic dialogue among peers in developing and emerging countries as well as developed economies, showcasing policy learnings on issues of high shared priority, which include e-KYC processes and Digital ID. The 2020 event built on the outcomes of its inaugural edition of 2019, itself a follow up to the Prague on Global Dialogue on Regulatory Approaches for Inclusive Fintech, where Enabling FinTech Ecosystems was identified as one of the key areas of priority in the global 3D Workstream.2