Goals
The term "financial inclusion" has gained importance since the early 2000s, a result of findings about financial exclusion and its direct correlation to poverty. The United Nations defines the goals of financial inclusion as follows:
- access at a reasonable cost for all households to a full range of financial services, including savings or deposit services, payment and transfer services, credit and insurance;
- sound and safe institutions governed by clear regulation and industry performance standards;
- financial and institutional sustainability, to ensure continuity and certainty of investment; and
- competition to ensure choice and affordability for clients.
Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on 29 December 2003, said: ”The stark reality is that most poor people in the world still lack access to sustainable financial services, whether it is savings, credit or insurance. The great challenge before us is to address the constraints that exclude people from full participation in the financial sector. Together, we can and must build inclusive financial sectors that help people improve their lives.” More recently, Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) Executive Director Alfred Hannig highlighted on 24 April 2013 progress in financial inclusion during the IMF-World Bank 2013 Spring Meetings: "Financial inclusion is no longer a fringe subject. It is now recognized as an important part of the mainstream thinking on economic development based on country leadership."
Read more about this topic: Financial Inclusion
Famous quotes containing the word goals:
“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals renders the goals themselves despicable.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“I think that any woman who sets goals for herself and takes her own life seriously and moves to achieve the goals that she wants as a person in her own right is a feminist.”
—Frances Kuehn (b. 1943)