ArmInfo. Working group meetings on digital financial services (DFS) and consumer empowerment and market conduct (CEMC) of Alliance for Financial Inclusion, AFI will be held till March 25 in Armenia with participation of 100 representatives from 40 developing countries. As the press-service of Armenia's Central Bank informed ArmInfo the first meetings were held on March 21 at the Dilijan Training and Research Center.
According to the source, joint sessions will examine and debate current trends in financial inclusion, including the impact of the Maya commitments and declaration, opportunities for the promotion of financial inclusion within the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, new behavioral research, the upcoming launch of AFI's financial inclusion data portal as well as areas of common interests and possible collaborative activities between the two working groups. The CEMC and DFS working groups will then break into separate focused policy sessions for the remainder of the week and wrap up their work on 25 March.
To note, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) is a network of financial inclusion policymakers. AFI utilizes a peer-to-peer learning model to connect, encourage and enable financial policymakers to interact and exchange knowledge on policy initiatives such as consumer protection, mobile financial services,[4] financial integrity, agent banking, formalizing microsavings, data and measurement, and general financial inclusion. In April 2011 AFI established Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct (CEMC), working group. Besides Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgrystan, Tajikistan, Switserland, China, India, Tailand, Brazil are members of AFI Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) member institutions are central banks and other financial regulatory institutions from more than 90 developing countries.
To recall, Armenia's Central Bank became member of AFI on February 8, 2011. The bank is heading the Consumer Empowerment and Market Conduct (CEMC) working group and is a member of Digital Financial Services (DFSWG) working group.