NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, December 11, 2014

The first “Inclusive Finance India Global Summit” in Delhi, organized by ACCESS, a national think tank, was inaugurated on Monday (December 8) by Shri HR Khan, deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The two days of deliberations at the Summit covered issues related to Financial Inclusion, Financial Education and Financial Stability, and built a Financial Inclusion Vision 2020. MetLife Foundation is proud to be one of the two principal partners in the Inclusive Finance Summit.

Financial inclusion can help achieve the goals of eliminating extreme poverty and building shared prosperity. Inclusive financial systems allow poor people to insure themselves against economic vulnerabilities they face. Financial inclusion enables poor people to save and to borrow – allowing them to build their assets, to invest in education and livelihoods opportunities, and thus to improve their quality of life. Financial inclusion has gained prominence in recent years, across the world, as a policy objective to improve the lives of the poor. Recognizing that 2.5 billion adults worldwide are ‘unbanked’, the World Bank has put forward a vision for achieving universal financial access by 2020. More than 50 countries, including India, have made ambitious commitments to financial inclusion targets.

Bringing together over one thousand delegates from around the world, including sector experts, policy makers, regulators and bankers, the Inclusive Finance India Summit brought in best practices from around the world, including technology solutions that have delivered, efficient private sector models that demonstrate efficiency, and government policies that can enable progress in financial inclusion.

“It is important to bring a larger constituency of stakeholders, beyond just the government, RBI and banks to assess and analyze its performance” stated Vipin Sharma, CEO of ACCESS Development Services. “Over the next five years, the Inclusive Finance India Summit will track India’s progress towards financial inclusion, benchmark progress against other countries and help to build an enabling environment.”