More adults own bank accounts
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ADULT bank account ownership grew from 64 per cent in 2014 to 80 per cent in 2020.
This was revealed by the Reserve Bank of Fiji’s Governor Ariff Ali during the launch of the Pacific Insurance and Climate Adaptation Programme’s (PICAP) Gender Equality and Social Inclusion strategy and other projects on Friday.
He said there was also an increase in uptake of mobile money, insurance and saving.
The country was able to implement two national financial inclusion strategies since 2009 and, according to the governor, the third national financial inclusion strategy would guide their journey through to 2030.
“For the first time, this new strategy is aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals focusing on areas of inclusive finance, digital financial services, MSMEs, consumer protection and financial capability. So we look forward to developing synergies with programs provided by the UN, Government
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and our development partners as we attempt to work smarter by pooling our resources and expertise,” he said.
“To kick-start our work under the new strategy, the UNCDF has generously provided funding support to assist with the first three-year implementation phase on a number of programs and activities.”
Mr Ali said they had started with the bundled insurance product, which was working quite well for farmers, civil servants and social welfare recipients, some of whom were now paying premiums from their own pockets; to more recently, a parametric micro-insurance product which had the potential to be a real game-changer for Fiji and the region.
“As the successor to PFIP, and under the leadership of Krishnan and his team, PICAP, FijiCare, Sun Insurance and its partners have been able to develop and launch this product for extreme weather events,” he said.
Mr Ali added it had been deemed the first of many - from its digital onboarding capability through the iOnboard platform, to its weather-index models, automatic pay-outs, to being given VAT-free status by the Fiji Government and also the first applicant to proceed to the pilot testing stage under the RBF FinTech Regulatory Sandbox.
He said the iOnboard platform in particular was a new digital innovation which supported their efforts to leverage technology to progress financial inclusion.
Prior to launching the iOnboard video at the event, Mr Ali said in the first five months of Sandbox testing, PICAP had progressed quite well.
He said they were witnessing how this product continued to evolve to meet the needs of Fiji’s vulnerable population.
“I also understand that this new parametric product has a social protection insurance scheme for social welfare beneficiaries living in climate-vulnerable locations.
“We are confident that these initiatives will continue to grow the insurance penetration rate in Fiji to help individuals and businesses build resilience and also lighten the load on Government to get us back on our feet following natural disasters.”
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