Peru's Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Private Pension Funds (SBS) took up the chairmanship of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), at the organization's Annual General Meeting, starting the 2014 Global Policy Forum (GPF) in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
AFI is in charge of promoting financial inclusion worldwide and providing tools and resources to facilitate the design of policies for access and use of financial services. In six years AFI has grown into the world's largest network of financial inclusion policymakers, representing 120 institutions from 95 countries.
Through initiatives such as the Maya Declaration, Working Groups on key policy areas, and as an implementing partner of the G20 GPFI, AFI has been instrumental in making financial inclusion policy a global development agenda priority.
SBS’s Deputy Superintendent of Market behavior and Financial education, Mariela Zaldivar, noted the commission which has been given to the country is in recognition of Peru’s commitment to making thousands of its citizens to enhance their quality of life through the use of financial services.
In this regard, the high-level SBS executive explained that the work of financial inclusion in Peru kicked off in late 1990s with the development of microcredit which then led to micro finance.
Subsequently, the concept of banking is generated and today we talk about financial inclusion, with much broader term which seeks to incorporate a larger number of Peruvians to the formal financial system.
Furthermore, Zaldivar stressed the Ollanta Humala administration aims to achieve an inclusion with quality and not a messy inclusion which in the future will likely create exclusion.
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Published: 9/9/2014