Business Desk :
A three day long international WSBI (World Savings and Retail Banking Institute) 2nd workshop on “Rural Financial Inclusion” has been inaugurated on Tuesday at Dhaka hosted by Bank Asia Limited for the first time in Bangladesh. Deputy Governor of Bangladesh Bank SM Moniruzzaman, inaugurated the program as chief guest while Senior Advisor of WSBI Mina Zhang was the keynote speaker of the seminar. COP of Agricultural Value Chains Project of USAID, Paul Bundick and Executive Director of Institute for Inclusive Finance & Development (InM) Dr. Mustafa K Mujeri addressed the different challenges and opportunities of Rural Financial Inclusion respectively Managing Director of Bank Asia Limited Md Arfan Ali, presided over the event where Managing Directors from different private commercial bank including NRB Bank Limited, AB Bank Limited, NRB Commercial Bank Limited and high officials from several other national and international financial institutions were also present in this event.
More than 50 banking leaders from nine countries throughout Asia descended on Dhaka to take part in a special three-day event to focus on widening more access to basic financial services for people living in rural areas.
Bank Asia Limited and WSBI, the gathering of savings and retail bankers explores how to address real-world challenges facing rural finance, such as how to best embed financial services in different ways in people’s lives. The workshop serves as an occasion for participants to exchange their national approach in ‘last mile financial inclusion’ and share insight on their respective institutions’ efforts. Alternative distribution channels are an important way to achieve last-mile success. Better use of agent banking can help banks connect even closer to people in cities and countryside alike. Leveraging big data from other sources can ‘bank’ more unbank who historically lack credit profiles.
“We are proud of sharing Bank Asia’s experience in rural finance with peers from the WSBI network. I hope that banks taking part can gain more insight into our practice of how best to create the products and services that help people become more connected to their communities and local economies too, especially in often hard-to-reach rural areas,” said Bank Asia Limited President and Managing Director Mohammed Arfan Ali, who gave the opening remarks, said a press release.
