Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands will attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos from 20-23 January in her capacity as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA). It is the WEF’s 50th anniversary.
The UNSGSA’s program in Davos will include several plenary sessions, as well as bilateral talks with government representatives of various countries and officials from central banks, including those of Ethiopia, Ghana, Italy, Nigeria and Pakistan. She will also meet with representatives of fintech organizations and the business community to discuss the state of play regarding improving access to financial services.
The Special Advocate will take part in the 2020 TIME 100 Davos Dinner on Monday evening. The gathering’s theme is Next-Generation World: Shaping the Future, with attendees discussing how their activities can contribute to the development for the next generation.
On Tuesday, Queen Máxima will give a short opening speech at the lunch meeting on Smallholder Finance as Asset Class, hosted by the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), at 12:30pm CET (6:30am EST).
On the morning of Wednesday, the UNSGSA will open a workshop entitled Financial Inclusion Beyond the Individual: The Role of MSMEs. Digital financial services play an important role in the development potential of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).
Also, on Wednesday, she will attend a CEO Partnership for Economic Inclusion (CEOP) meeting. The CEOP’s goal is to help its 10 member companies explore opportunities to join forces and offer financial services to underserved customer segments such as MSMEs, farmers, women and migrant workers. In the process, the companies improve their bottom lines and build a collective knowledge of the market, while targeted customer segments obtain better access and usage of financial services. In January 2018 the CEOs of Ant Financial, AXA, Bharti Airtel, Mastercard, PayPal, PepsiCo, Rabobank, Santander Bank, Telenor and Unilever met for the first in this configuration at the WEF at the invitation of Queen Máxima.
On the morning of Thursday, the Special Advocate will take part in a session of the Stewardship Board of the World Economic Forum System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Financial and Monetary Systems, of which she has been a member since 2016. She will also join a working lunch of the Washington Post and Foreign Policy.
Since 2009 Queen Máxima has been working worldwide in her capacity as the UNSGSA to make financial services available to all, especially low-income groups, women and small and medium-sized enterprises, with the aim of improving their opportunities for economic and social development.