The UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance, H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, will join public and private-sector leaders for an announcement of major advances in financial inclusion and for the presentation of concrete commitments to accelerate progress at the World Bank on Friday 17 April.
Together with the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, World Bank President Jim Kim, MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, and other leaders, the Special Advocate will participate in the flagship event of the Spring Meetings of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C.
The event, "Universal Financial Access 2020: Toward the Last Mile," will highlight progress toward universal access to financial services by 2020, and will include announcements of numeric public and private commitments from a broad coalition of partners to speed that goal. The gathering will be live-streamed around the world.
Queen Máxima and President Kim announced the goal of universal access by 2020 at the World Bank three years ago.
Landmark data from the new edition of the Global Findex will also be presented at the Friday event—numbers that will reveal how much progress has been made toward financial inclusion over the last three years. The Special Advocate has long pushed for the collection of detailed data to inform decision-making and planning related to financial inclusion, and she has written the foreword to the Findex’s Little Data Book on Financial Inclusion, which will be published on Thursday 16 April.
In addition to attending the “Universal Financial Access” session, the Special Advocate will also meet with government representatives, governors of central banks, and supervisors from different countries.