 Welcome to the Fiji Symposium 2019 in Cairo, Egypt, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today, Mr Ahmed Dirmish, who is the Policy and Ecosystem Specialist for the United Nations Capital Development Fund. Ahmed, welcome to the studio. Great. Thanks for having me. Now, I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about digital financial services, which is obviously very much what the topic of conversation is here. I wanted to ask you what will it take for the world's poorest people to prefer digital financial services over cash, and will digital financial services be enough for this to happen? Great. Thanks. I think the most obvious answer is it has to deliver the equal amount of value as cash does. Cash is very convenient. It's accessible. It's familiar. It's been used for millennia. It's going to be hard to change, regardless. So I don't think we can expect digital to be better just because you and I might use it, right? So I think the ability for digital products to mimic cash at a minimum are required, but we do see examples where on the surface it seems to be the same, and there isn't that take up. And I think what we might find in the future is that the link of digital products to more social context, right, where we have improvements in how people communicate in terms of frequency, in terms of reliability, and the ability to pay easily as I'm having a conversation with you about a deal we're making might be that component that drives use of digital. There are a lot of other behavioral and sort of product design regulatory components to it, but fundamentally I think it really links, it will accelerate for poor people if we can link the digital service to the functions of cash, but connected to their social experience, their economic experience, and their lives. And if one can build trust as well I suppose? Well fundamentally, I mean if you want to link trust to that social connection as the glue, right, I'm making a deal with you in terms of business, it's because I have some trust in you. If you are my brother-in-law and I'm lending you some money, I expect some repayment, there is some trust there. So I think it's a good point, maybe a proxy for social value is trust. And if digital can drive social value via trust, then we might see more uptake. And what innovations do you think are required in terms of, we talked about regulation a little bit there, in regulatory collaboration to create an enabling environment for digital financial services? So I have a bit of an issue with the framing of the question, right? I don't think we need to innovate around regulatory collaboration, frankly. I think regulators have collaborated for generations when they've had clear problems that they need to tackle together. Now the problems we are looking at might be innovative in nature. But I think if we can increase the character of communication and by what I mean by that is that if we're creating replicable space for dialogue between regulators where it's safe. So I can present my bias as say a telecoms regulator and I can present my bias as say a financial sector regulator. And if we can put those honest points on the table, I am concerned about the risk of this product in this way, then I think we'll see greater degrees of collaboration. Now the space that that happens might have to be more innovative than the past, right? Conferences might not do, we might have to go more of a workshop model, etc. But I would leave that to the local environment to decide. I don't think we need any grand innovations in terms of regulatory collaboration. We probably just need to be more focused about what we talk about and honest about how we talk about it. Because each region would have its own particular needs and requirements. Absolutely, and the problems will be different. I'd like to put a statement to you and ask for your perspective on this. An unintended consequence of a digital finance-led financial inclusion program is that it can lead to greater financial data inclusion but not necessarily increased financial inclusion. Do you agree with this statement? I think it's true. I think financial inclusion and data, the correlation is not necessarily clear at the moment. As a consumer, you and I probably don't know how to leverage our data. I'm not out there selling my financial data or my any data to anyone for my own benefit. In fact I have to acknowledge when I give it away for free. Until we find a way where a consumer can really be empowered to use that data to improve how they use a service, then I think we might actually see two tracks develop. Those who have some basic financial services and are data included, so they get access to some of that, and others who are excluded because they refuse to play the data game. I think that is going to be a concern and it gets back to our earlier question about what digital services are going to, what are needed from digital services to compete with cash. I guess we had yesterday here was talking about the fact that our social media interactions are actually going to be measured and are going to be influencing our data, our financial profile. What would you say about that? I think that's true. I wouldn't necessarily focus on social media alone, but I would say our social construct does affect how we use it. I want to know that whoever I'm working with on the other side of this deal isn't going to have access to all of my information either as you as my counterpart or the financial institution who is representing you as part of this. If I'm making a payment to you but then your bank gets all of my data, if I'm not aware of that then we have a problem. Then that could break down the trust in that transaction. I don't want to work with people who bank with that financial institution. If that happens and with the rise of social media and the capacity to send that message quickly, hey, if you work with bank X in this region, don't do that because now they're selling your data, which is why you're getting all these robo calls around the election, then that's going to cannibalize your market. So I don't know if we are really thinking through those consequences yet. It works both ways. It works both ways, exactly. Well thank you very much for joining us today. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. We look forward to catching up with you again in the future. Great, thank you. Thank you.