Financial Inclusion Week - time to create real change to the 1.4 billion people worldwide who are unbanked.

Financial Inclusion Week - time to create real change to the 1.4 billion people worldwide who are unbanked.

16 - 19 October 2023

So what is financial inclusion? 

Financial inclusion is when individuals have access to appropriate and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs. This is something that many of us take for granted but, according to the latest figures from the World Bank, 1.4 billion people worldwide remain unbanked and more than 1 billion of these are female. 

We all remember our first steps of independence - walking ourselves to school, earning our own pocket money, and most of us remember when we opened our first bank account. Being unbanked means that an individual doesn’t have the option to start a savings account or apply for finance, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks or other informal financial services that usually come with extremely high interest rates and risk. It also limits their ability to manage family funds, plan for the future, or build a business. 

Financial Inclusion Week is an annual virtual thinktank to advance inclusive finance globally and is convened by the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) taking place from 16-20 October 2023. The forum aims to enable the exchange of ideas, research and perspectives from around the world. This year’s theme is “Is inclusive finance ready for the accelerating pace of change?”. 

Accelerating levels of change is a constant in the world we live in today. Increased digitalisation, the impact of climate change being felt with more frequent climate-related disasters and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), just to name a few. Unfortunately these changes give rise to greater levels of exclusion and inequality, especially for women, low-income and other marginalised groups. This year’s Financial Inclusion Week is focused on how inclusive finance can help us to navigate these changes and how we can utilise new technologies to lead to minimising exclusion. 

Financial Inclusion week is free to attend and anyone is welcome to register. You can choose from many interesting sessions from the live agenda, as well as many on-demand sessions that can be listened to anytime during the week. Simply register here.

Connect with Good Return during Financial Inclusion Week

Good Return team members are speaking in two on-demand sessions which you may want to listen to. 

The session titled “Accelerating financial inclusion of people with disabilities: the transformative power of digitalization” has a panel of experts, including Alison Thornburn from Good Return, who will share their experiences in advancing the financial and economic empowerment of people with disabilities. The session includes a demonstration of innovative software plug-in Louie Voice, currently being implemented by a bank in India to make its services accessible through voice commands in eight different languages, and learnings from the disability inclusion journey undertaken by Chamroeun Microfinance Plc in partnership with Good Return in Cambodia. View the session using this link at any time during Financial Inclusion Week.

Another on-demand session featuring the Good Return team is “She is the key: Women farmers in Nepal building resilience to climate change”. Frances Mayall, Marketing & Communications Manager, and Anvesha Punjani, Program Impact & Effectiveness Manager, are sharing how Good Return is helping low-income women and other financially excluded communities to build financial confidence and independence. They will introduce you to Bishnu Kumari, an indigenous Nepali woman living in the lower reaches of Himalayas. Bishnu’s family has been farming in the area for generations, but she now faces new agricultural patterns, pest infestations, water borne diseases and changed geography due to climate change. Last winter she lost her potato crop and vital earnings for her family. The session will explore how financial literacy and inclusion are key to ensuring women like Bishnu can plan for a stronger future and build resilience to the challenges of a changing climate. View the session using this link at any time during Financial Inclusion Week.

Tackling financial inclusion on the ground

At Good Return we dream about a world where all adults are financially included as we know that this is a key enabler to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity. We are actively working in countries within Asia Pacific that have some of the lowest levels of financial inclusion. 75% of the Solomon Islands population is currently unbanked, and in PNG it is as high as 80%. 

Good Return’s Consumer Awareness and Financial Empowerment (CAFE) initiative is an innovative financial education program for people in disadvantaged communities. It is a multi-week coaching program that leverages face-to-face training and digital tools to enable participants to take control of their financial life. The Good Return team and our partners travel far and wide to engage with learners, from remote mountainous regions in Nepal to tiny island communities in the Solomon Islands.

Once an individual has financial confidence and capability they are better able to make good financial choices and access the financial products and services they need, becoming part of the financially included.

If you would like any further information about what Good Return is doing about financial inclusion, click here. 

Good Return’s CAFE Initiative is delivered in partnership with the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (#ANCP).