Bangalore to host first Financial Inclusion Global Initiative Symposium

Bangalore will host the first Financial Inclusion Global Initiative (FIGI) Symposium from 29 November to 1 December 2017.

The focus of FIGI symposium is digital banking access for the world’s unbanked. Focus is also on expanding digital financial inclusion in developing countries. Thought leaders in financial inclusion will convene in Bangalore to share insight into the latest developments in ‘mobile money’ market dynamics and related reforms to policy and regulation.

India’s Aadhaar unique biometric ID and associated policy reforms underpin the country’s new Unified Payment Interface, an initiative to accelerate the creation of digital transaction accounts, encourage the interoperability of digital wallets, and digitalize the Indian government’s payment of social security benefits.

The first day of the FIGI Symposium will host a capacity-building event for regulators as well as meetings of FIGI’s three working groups. The remaining two days of the symposium will share information on developing countries’ latest innovations in digital financial services, looking into the key features of these innovations as they relate to business, technology and the evolution of national policy and regulatory environments.

FIGI is a three-year programme of collective action led by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Bank Group and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative is designed to advance research in digital finance and accelerate digital financial inclusion in developing countries.

The FIGI Symposium will be held on an annual basis over the next three years (2017-2020) in order to provide a forum for dialogue regulators from telecom and financial services, DFS providers and all concerned stakeholders to share their experience and views on the main challenges to be addressed for scaling up DFS.