Institutional Relations
The Global Voice of Savings and Retail Banking
WSBI represents its members and promotes their views through a dialogue with national, regional and international institutions (such as the IMF, World Bank, United Nations agencies, etc.) with a view towards promoting WSBI member banks' model as a unique tool with a proven track record for sustainable development. In this way, WSBI works with its members to advocate for the interests of savings and socially committed retail banks in various parts of the world.
The specific issues that WSBI works on are:
- Access to Finance – with the general objective to increasing access to affordable, usable, convenient financial services and products among the general population. This covers several issues:
- Microfinance – giving visibility to the involvement of members in all the different microfinance fields -microcredit, but also microsavings, microinsurance, micropayments- and encouraging a framework conducive to the provision of small-scale financial products and services targeted to low income segments of the population;
- Savings Mobilisation – highlighting the innovative approaches developed by members to capture savings, including small savings, and raising their profile as principal agents in their local economies, as they mobilize savings into the formal financial sector, effectively channeling resources for investment opportunities in local, regional or international markets;
- Doubling the number of savings accounts in the hands of the poor - As a part of the work to mobilise savings and increase access to finance, WSBI is working with savings banks to drastically increase the number of savings accounts in the hands of the poor. The programme is being supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
- Financial education – promoting financial literacy and capability as a necessary step to reach the unbanked and develop long-term relationship with formal banking institutions, based on trust and confidence;
- Inclusive financial sectors – supporting the development of an enabling environment for the provision of financial services to all segments of the population and entrepreneurs, including the remote and underserved categories, and removing the remaining obstacles, whether of a legal, institutional, prudential or cultural nature;
- International Remittances – encouraging the flows of money from migrant workers home to go through the formal financial system - thereby fostering economic development and bringing access to banking services for a larger number of people;
- Postal Savings Institutions – developing possibilities of cooperation between WSBI postal savings institutions, and in particular providing support and guidance, for the institutional reform process, and liaising with decision-makers.
- Reform of the global financial sector system – position WSBI member banks, their proximity banking model and the pluralism of banking markets as building blocks for sustainable, stable and efficient retail banking sectors.
Contact: anne-francoise.lefevre@savings-banks.com