Financial sector regulators and policymakers in seven countries representing AFI’s Eastern Europe & Central Asia Policy Initiative (ECAPI) are attending the event to exchange knowledge and experiences, which will be held virtually due to the coronavirus outbreak. ECAPI is comprised of central banks from Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Financial Regulatory Commission of Mongolia.
It marks the second EGFIP gathering that Central Bank of Armenia has co-hosted since onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, demonstrating its and other ECAPI members’ commitment to accelerating financial inclusion across the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region. Central Bank of Armenia is the current chair of ECAPI.
“The ECAPI EGFIP and Member Training is a great opportunity to share key achievements and current challenges of member countries. It is a great a chance to summarize the results of work of last few months and explore peer learning opportunities to address specific challenges according to financial education and literacy and digital innovations advancing financial inclusion,” said Central Bank of Armenia Deputy Governor Vakhtang Abrahamyan.
The two-day event will kick off with EGFIP members sharing their expertise on pressing topics, including electronic Know-Your-Customer (e-KYC), electronic identification (e-ID) and interoperable regional payments systems. Complimenting this will be subsequent member training on financial education and literacy initiatives, reflecting the growing number of countries in the region developing national financial education strategies.
“We are thankful to Armenia for being a leader in AFI and ECAPI and co-hosting two meetings of the regional initiative this year. Though the COVID-19 crisis has hard across the AFI network, we believe that without the strides AFI members made over the past decade in advancing financial inclusion, combined with their proactive policy response to the crisis of the previous months, the situation could have been far worse. Initiatives in digital finance, mobile money, agent banking, e-KYC and SME finance played a critical part in mitigating the effects of the crisis,” AFI Executive Director Dr. Alfred Hannig said.
As we proceed with recovery and building of ‘better normal’, we as regulators, should draw the right conclusions from what we have learned so far and aim to build the ‘new economy’, AFI Executive Director said. Dr. Hannig highlighted that besides gains made through digital financial services, the recovery should also include green finance consideration to allow the new economy to be green, resilient and socially inclusive, as well as strengthen the gender lens when developing emergency and recovery responses.
“The crisis is not over, and we are on this road together. Yet, with every crisis there is also opportunity. We in AFI see a case for policymakers to accelerate financial inclusion interventions so that these efforts benefit even the informal sector to quicken the recovery process. Our recently opened Europe Office in Luxembourg serves to help accelerate knowledge exchange and peer learning among ECAPI members with the rest of the network and beyond,” Dr. Hannig underscored.
Further deepening the collective knowledge of the AFI network, regulators from developed countries – including Germany and ...
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