There is a story told by Jamaica’s Director of Social Security about a woman who visits her bank each month, where her welfare check and any savings are held, empties the account, counts all her money, and satisfied that none is missing, re-deposits it once again with the bank. After all, for men and women who have never before been a part of the formal banking system, handing their money over to a bank feels unsafe. Who is to say someone will not steal it? How do they know that, once their funds are in an account, the government won’t impose more taxes on them? [Learn more about Jamaica’s initiatives on financial inclusion here.]
Then there is the account of the post office, where welfare recipients can retrieve payments, whose staff knows everyone in the community and invites customers to sit and chat each time one comes in. On one particular day, when the payments were due, recipients visited the post office but found it was closed with a sign on the door directing customers to either return the next day or to collect their payment from the bank across the street. Not one person opted to retrieve the check at the bank; all preferred to wait the additional day for their money just so they could return to their familiar post office.
What these stories—shared at the recent IASPN conference “Partnerships for Financial Inclusion: A Catalyst for Inclusive Growth”—demonstrate is the key role trust plays when it comes to implementing financial inclusion initiatives. Because financial inclusion is increasingly seen as a way to reduce poverty when linked with social protection payments, the benefits, challenges, and requirements for a supportive environment of financial inclusion and asset building were explored throughout the April 29-30, 2014 event in New York City. Practitioners, social development ministry representatives, private sector counterparts, and program implementers from across Latin American and the Caribbean joined with their peers in the U.S. cities to pool their experience and ideas, opening up the possibility for technical cooperation partnerships.