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By Chinwendu Obienyi
The World Savings and Retail Banking Institute (WSBI) as well as the Central Bank of Nigeria has urged players in the formal financial sector to provide convenient products for the informal sector.
The two bodies made this known during the Scale2Save financial inclusion knowledge sharing event attended by key financial stakeholders across the country in Lagos recently.
While reiterating the importance of inclusive financial services for Nigerian women, youths and farmers as a way to fuel the country’s economic recovery and growth, the bodies also said provision of non-generic products to the informal space would ensure Nigeria attains 94 per cent financial inclusion by 2024.
Delivering her keynote address, the Programme Director, Scale2Save at WSBI, Weselina Angelow, called for a joint effort from stakeholders to seek ways of connecting the formal financial services and informal sector together.
Reiterating the commitment of Scale2Save and how the programme is impacting its members as well as other stakeholders, Angelow stated that the mission of Scale2Save is to support financial inclusion initiatives to help millions of Nigerian youths, women and farmers.
Her words, “1.7 billion people globally remain excluded from formal financial services and the WSBI strives to change it. Scale2Save is WSBI’s current programme on financial inclusion- aimed at empowering low-income people working in Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Uganda and Senegal. Our goal is to include 1 million low income people, especially youths, women and farmers, into the formal financial system by August 2022.
If financial providers can offer services that meet the needs of informal groups, we believe that a higher savings rate can be achieved because it takes a lot of awareness to convince people to intentionally and systematically save. At the same time, we have to stop the perception that the low income people do not have money to save”
Commenting on the need to deepen financial inclusion in Nigeria, the Head of Financial Inclusion Secretariat at CBN, Dr. Paul Oluikpe, stated that financial service providers must target specific customer needs with financial inclusion products.
“There are several products in our financial services space that are too generic. These products are not targeting any value proposition, and are not sufficiently differentiated at the customer level. While there are generic products that appeal to the larger audience, there is the need to drill down at the customer level to target different nuances that exist in the society,” he said.
Oluikpe further noted that the current slow pace of growth of the economy was due to the counteractions coming from the fiscal authorities, adding that Nigeria was not earning enough oil income to be able to sustain its fiscal buffers.
