Financial Regulators and the Gateway to Financial Inclusion

About 2.7bn people in the world rely on cash, physical assets and informal services to manage their financial lives. This could change thanks to initiatives encouraged by the G20, such as the guidance paper on financial inclusion released last June by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The report recognizes that the predominance of cash undermines financial integrity, and it clarifies how to interpret some of the standards set by FATF. The challenge for the G20, global standard setters and financial services regulators, is to figure out how to concretely help those 2.7bn people access formal financial services, in particular in the developing countries where the vast majority live. A safe bet could be to facilitate account opening