Banks eye women clients

 FINANCIAL institutions and service providers are committed to reaching 1.6 million more unbanked and under-served Papua New Guineans by end of 2015.

About 800,000 of this number are expected to be women with low incomes.  

This commitment was made at the conclusion of a national workshop organised by the Bank of Papua New Guinea (Bank of PNG) last Tuesday.

Called Increasing Women’s Access to Financial Services, the workshop discussed priorities for financial inclusion in the informal economic policy 2011. 

It also aimed to establish targets for next year and 2015 in the country’s first ever national strategy on financial inclusion and financial literacy.

Stakeholders agreed to increase the number of women represented in financial services portfolios to 50% and develop products appropriate for rural women. 

Bank of PNG, with technical and financial assistance from the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) and Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion (CEFI), convened financial service providers including commercial banks, micro-banks, Post PNG and other non-bank financial institutions for the national workshop. 

It was the first time stakeholders, through a consultative process, identified action items, timeline and outputs for the priority areas of financial inclusion.  

These were  financial education and literacy, consumer protection and market conduct, deepening rural, branchless and mobile banking, demand driven research and data, integrating financial inclusion in local and national government, micro-enterprise financing and 

“We cannot develop a sustainable economy unless every man and woman learns money management,” Treasury Minister Don Polye said. 

Bank of PNG Governor Loi Bakani stressed the need for district level consultations with key stakeholders to understand and recognise the importance of financial inclusion and financial literacy to create economically sustainable communities.