Good morning.
It is a privilege for me to chair this panel on the importance of financial inclusion and how digitalisation can contribute to it. It's all the more a privilege given that the panel includes governors from four countries with broad experience in promoting financial inclusion, where significant initiatives in this area have been launched with the central bank taking the lead.
Access to financial services continues to be a primary problem globally. On the latest World Bank estimates, almost 1.7 billion adults do not have access to an account offering basic functionalities and, therefore, they are excluded from basic services such as payments, credit and saving. This has obvious repercussions for economic and social development, as there is a positive correlation both with growth and employment1, and it is thus essential to understand the causes behind it.
