CBN set to include financial inclusion as key mandate area

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is planning to formally include Financial Inclusion to her core mandate.

This was disclosed on Tuesday, 21st July by Mrs Aishah Ahmad (Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Central Bank of Nigeria) at a webinar organized by SANEF in partnership with NIBSS and Business Day, with the theme: Accelerating Financial Inclusion Through Collaboration.

The virtual event which had Segun Agbaje (MD/CEO of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc) as the keynote speaker and Ronke Kuye (CEO, SANEF) as the host, was moderated by Lehle Balde (Senior Associate, Strategy Innovation & Partnerships, Business Day) and had seasoned panellists that comprised of Toyin Adeniji (Executive Director, Microenterprises, Bank of Industry), Dr. Paul Oluikpe (Associate Head, Financial Inclusion Secretariat, CBN), Robert Giles (Senior Banking Advisor, Retail Banking, Access Bank Plc), Degbola Abudu, MD/CEO, Capricorn Digital), Anup Singh (Partner, Microsave Consulting), Titilola Shogaolu (Divisional CEO, Interswitch Financial Inclusion Services) and Isa Omagu (Director, Marketing and Sales, Unified Payments).

In her opening remark as a special guest, Aishah Ahmad stated that, “In fact, there are actually talks of getting financial inclusion to be included formally in the mandate of  Central Banks”.

She further stated that financial inclusion is very high on the government’s agenda for global policy makers as it is very critical to bridging income gaps, avoiding poverty, including people in the financial system, growing the GDP and a host of other very positive outcomes.

While sharing from both personal and global perspectives, the panellists harped on the imperative of effective collaboration across the entire ecosystem and provided deep insights on strategies for accelerating financial inclusion through an effective stakeholders’ collaboration that is fit for purpose across the entire value chain.

In a very articulate and concise brief, Aishah Ahmad stated that, “I participated in a workshop that was jointly organized by the University of Michigan and the Bill & Melinda Gate foundation last year and that was the exact topic. And it’s not difficult to understand why this topic is important and why we are thinking about formally including it in the Central Bank’s mandate. It’s because financial inclusion is so critical to bridging income gaps, avoiding poverty, including people in the financial system, to growing the GDP and a host of other very positive outcomes. I think this is no less a focus for Nigeria, it’s been a significant focus for us both on the policy making side in the fiscal and monetary authorities”.

On some of the key initiatives of the Central Bank of Nigeria in achieving the broader objectives of Financial inclusion, Aishah Ahmad stated that, “I think we joined the Mexico declaration in 2011 to adopt the financial inclusion target of 80% inclusion by 2020 and within that framework we came up with the National Financial Inclusion Strategy whose governance framework includes the Technical Committee which I chair and the Steering Committee as well. These are inter-agency committees that have regulators, ministries departments and agencies (MDAs), institutions of higher learning, development organizations, etc within that framework. And of course, within that collaborative space it has helped us to move closer to the current financial inclusion target of well over 60%”. 

“So, it’s clearly a very important objective, but it’s a complex one and I think you would all agree with me because we saw how the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact brought this sharply to focus, where we experienced key challenges in the G2P space distributing palliatives to excluded individuals. We saw that contrary to what we might have believed in the past, there was lack of identity, cash and leveraging the banking hall still remains a significant part of this financial system”, she said.

She further asserted that, “For those that have been following Nigeria and all the achievements that we have made, am sure you will agree that there is a disconnect so to speak between all the significant innovations and technological advancements within our financial system and the high number of Nigerians who are financially excluded. They do not have digital identity and some are totally excluded outside the financial system. And we’ve found out that these individuals are often the ones that need to be connected to the financial system somewhat to be able to get access to some of the palliatives from both the private and public sectors”.

In submission, she stated that, “I think it brings an urgency to the fore to make sure that the governance framework that we have today is a bit more effective particularly for the National Financial Inclusion Committee”.

While acknowledging that there’s clearly room for improvement, she stated that the key to achieving the bigger objective is in making sure that collaboration is fit for purpose through shat she defined as a problem driven iterative adaptation framework.

SANEF is an initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), supported by Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) and Licensed Mobile Money Operators/Shared Agents with the objective of accelerating financial inclusion in Nigeria.

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