BUSINESS

CBN to enhance financial inclusion by 26% in three years

Published

7 years ago

September 7, 2017

Oriyomi Olamiposi

Financial Inclusion: CBN urges financial operators to diversify products

As part of it continued effort in boosting financial inclusion in the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is targeting a whopping 26 per cent reduction in financially excluded Nigerians by 2020. The financial inclusion vision, which is aiming at enabling the Nigerian population of about 180 million know, understand and develop the ability to evaluate financial products/services so as to lower the number of financially-excluded persons within the population, from 46.3 per cent to 20 per cent in the next three years.

For the record, financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable information about financial products or services that meet their needs in term of transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance that delivered in a responsible and sustainable way

However, on daily basis, many banks are introducing digital or technological services as a new innovation to boost their bottom lines. But financial experts believed that technological services strategy is model that move toward ease and simplify process with less workforces.

For instance, both customers and workers to fully understand this new model is a huge costs and time taken. The workforces in other hand will hinder the rise of new technologies; rather than propping up incumbent bank’s innovation to take its course while customers will be operating with half knowledge

Therefore, the financial services providers and stakeholders must learn from the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s prescient analysis of entrepreneurs. He noted that for new innovations to spread and improve our lives, there will always be creative destruction. For new firms, services and sectors to arise, some of the old ones must die.

Experts, however, charged the CBN and other regulators that they cannot expect to create a vibrant and flexible overall economy growth through banking unless they make these shifts as painless as possible.