 Yr Ymddi'r Ffordd, maen nhw'n falch yn gweld eu gwirio arall, a gallai hynny'n ei chael ystodом, maerai ei feddwl yn cyffredinol o'r Unigoedd Cynllunio Fylwyd Ffineisio'r Fyniadau yma yng Nghymru. Rydyn ni'n ymddych chi'n cael ei pryd-oedd, rwyf sgwrdd ar gyfer y gyrfaedd. Yn hyn, wnaetham eich fewn i mewn gyntaf. Yn hynny wedi wneud gan y ffarn oed, a oedd gwneud oherwydd i wneud ar gwyngau, So we're very happy to be here. Thank you very much for having me. We've had amazing progress. The data came out in around September and we've actually seen this. The last data says that worldwide we have 76% of people that have actually access to financial services. Just to give you an idea, in 2011 this was 50%. So a quarter of the world population has now gained access to financial services, to make payments, to be able to save, to be able to accept a credit, to ensure themselves against risks. And these are very important factors because it's basically being able to build up for the future, being able to protect yourself again and definitely being part of the economic system. How do you define financial health? What is the framework you think for the measurement? Well, let's start by the fact that once you have an account that doesn't mean A that you use it, so it's very important that we have good products so people actually will use these accounts to their own benefit. And the third point is one, access, usage. And then the other thing is outcome. Do I become better by actually having that account? Does that account really help me increase by savings for a rainy day? Does that account actually helps me to actually being able to give me a good type of credit that is according to my economic activity that will actually help me increase my income? Will that account actually help me in a very good way to get remittances from my children when times are tough? So this is the type of thing that we're looking for. So therefore, by the time we actually get it to 80% of access, my next question is financial inclusion is a means to an end, not an end in itself. So it is about actually having financial health, that financial inclusion helped having financial health. And what is financial health? We actually had a whole group that we tried to get a global definition. First of all, basically means being able to deal with your finances on a day-by-day basis, getting to the end of the month. Second is being able to be resilient, to be able to affront shocks. Maybe your husband dies or your children get sick or you lose your job or there is a big drought or whatever it is, you have to be able to be resilient to that. Thirdly, to actually have the capacity to plan for long-term goals. Is it to pay the education for your children, start your own company and invest in that company? And fourth, which is the non-numeric part, is actually much more subjective, is that you're at ease with it, that you don't have financial stress because we know that financial stress is actually a, actually reduces your productivity, it really brings down mental health, it's something that actually certainly brings down sort of productivity when you're working at a company. So these are issues that we really need to measure and financial stress can be, it's not an objective thing, it's a subjective thing. What more do you think can the private sector do to foster financial inclusion? Well, but financial inclusion, first of all, the private sector has a big role to play once the public sector basically has the proper regulations in place for the private sector to actually go on about and actually reach out and go to the clients. And go to the clients, not with the type of products, financial products that you will actually use, but if you go to Rule Women in Senegal, these ladies are going to need a completely different set of financial services. It has to be affordable, it has to be safe, it has to be private, it has to be according to her expenditures and income streams and that is the moment that these people are going to be using these products. A very important role the private sector has to take this as an opportunity and also look at the clients that are going to be serving and really give them products accordingly. What about the public-private sector? We're here at Davos and of course the leaders from all different industries are here. Are you optimistic about what you're hearing in terms of collaboration? Enormysly and I think it's not only a collaboration between the private and the public sector, but between the private and the private sector. In terms of the public and the private sector, we've actually seen the pandemic, a lot of governments at all of a sudden need to do payments to people that were far away and they actually all use mobile money, so they use private sector and they really work very well together. So that's a very important issue. At the same time, the private sector needs a couple of things from the public sector like digital public goods. What do I mean by that? Every inhabitant of any country should actually have a digital ID that is unique, there's biometric and with that, that's the only way for you to be able to open an account. At the same time, we need interoperability that can only be allowed by the government. We need a good set of regulations. We also need basically cyber protection. That's a very important thing, otherwise we're going to lose trust in two seconds if a big cybersecurity breach actually happens. So there is a cooperation between the public and the private sector that is very important. And the private and the private. I mean, we have consumer companies that would like to actually have better sort of relationships with their merchants, but these merchants do not have enough credit. And then, you know, we can actually have a situation that, you know, you have a corporation with a mobile bank and then they can actually not only give them the payment but also give them credit with a corporation of a consumer company. So really very amazing things going on there. You talked about digital. What impact can fintech and this digital infrastructure have on fostering financial inclusion? Well, many to begin with, I think from all the growth we've seen, the quarter population, I think half of it is thanks digitisation. And what is basically what we could not do before, you know, used to have a branch and, you know, that had a lot of costs. And, you know, if people had to queue hours to get into that branch, and now you get that branch on your phone, on your little sort of, you know, margin on the corner and you can actually exchange for money, make your payment. And this is amazing. And it can also allow us to actually make big innovations. For example, now we are actually having projects of people can actually pay a solar panel in a daily basis. By the same amount they would actually buy a little, you know, bucket of kerosene to hit the houses. Now the same amount they would actually pay to buy that daily kerosene, kerosene, they can actually buy that solar panel in instalments. Can you imagine that would not be possible with that phone? So innovation will actually give us not only access to financial services but also the type of outcomes that we want. Sustainability, financial health, being able to actually have better opportunity of investment, et cetera. So we know a really big promise. But there are also big risks. So we also need to quantify those risks and we need to protect people from those risks. How worried are you and which risk do you feel is the biggest? Well, cyber is a very big risk, of course. And that could actually sort of really hurt a lot the trust in the system. And this is a corporation that public and private sector, as in any cyber security issue, needs to be done. We have also situations in some countries that the access has increased, so financial inclusion has increased, but financial health has decreased. And there's a lot of offering, for example, of, you know, consumer loans and big parts of society ended up over indebted. That is not the idea here. So these are the type of risks we actually need to. And there's general fraud, not even cyber, but, you know, general fraud within or the pink code, like we have here in the developed world as well. Your Majesty, in your role as UN Special Advocate, you visited Côte d'Ivoire in Senegal in June and travelled to Tanzania in October. What impact did you see FinTech having there in these countries? And what stood out for you? Well, I mean, basically, we were at this with these ladies in Senegal, and it's called Myagro. And they had these women with a very small farm. They had a lot of family members sort of depending on them. And through this sort of NGO together with the mother banking, what actually happened is that this lady saves on a daily basis to be able to actually buy a package. And that package has seeds, fertilizers, a little bit of technical capacity. That lady actually basically then buys this package, sows it, and she increases her income by threefold. That's the first year. And then, can you imagine the compound increase, you know, when she starts realising, she's only did a part of her sort of acre, but now she's going to do the whole acre. And this would have not been possible without digitalisation and the cooperation with other, basically, players like input sellers and also in the whole value of agriculture. So example like this were enormous. So really very promising. How did it make you feel personally when you saw that? You know, when I went to Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, there was a first visit I did after the whole pandemic. And I kept on working, of course, doing a lot of Zoom calls like we all did, right? But the most incredible thing for me is to be able to visit clients. Because we're in these fantastic places like Davos, speaking to very powerful people, and then in ministries and big bank offices. But at the end of the day, it reminds me why I'm doing that. And I'm doing that for that women to be able to have access to all that input, to all those possibilities to increase her income and actually increase her whole family depending on her and really make a change. Where did this personal passion to help to make a difference come from? Well, I guess it comes because I was born in Argentina, born and raised and having lived even more than 2,000% inflation. And yeah, I saw how people were actually sort of falling off, you know, the possibility range and how they became very desperate. So I always had, I studied economics and I decided my 14th birthday, not at that birthday, but when I was 14, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to study economics to actually help people. I sort of thought that it might be a minister of finance, but I think I got sidetracked. It's okay. Maybe there was another track to actually follow. And I just want to ask you also about the World Bank Global Findex database, which was launched just in 2022. What impact can data have on global financial health? I have it here. It's my Bible. And now, first of all, it just tells us, everybody's actually working financial inclusion and also for country, you know, where we're having progress, where we're not having progress. So I can actually redirect the next coming years. We don't need to go to this country like Bangladesh has been doing very well on certain things, so we don't need to insist on Bangladesh on these issues. But we do have to go to another country that really needs a lot more help. For example, we saw here on the figures that Kenya has been amazingly well on the access side and financial inclusion, but not that great in financial health. So my assistance to Kenya is on the financial health side. It also follows, for example, issues like gender gap. And for the first time, after many measurements we've been actually having, because these measurements actually come up every three years, we saw the gender gap narrowing. So basically from 9% difference between men and women, now we're going to 6%. But not in all countries. Some countries didn't narrow the gap. So Tanzania was one of them. Last visit to Tanzania, one of the sort of big things and focus points was actually women and getting to women. So it gives us such a wealth of information about the progress, where do we have to focus our interest, and where do we really have to all work together to really make the development true. Just finally, Your Majesty, of course here at the World Economic Forum, everyone is very worried about the cost of living, the energy crisis, and the war still raging on in Ukraine. What keeps you up at night? No, frankly, it's been very difficult. We talked about financial health. Before this energy crisis, we were actually having 640,000 families in the Netherlands. They were actually having problematic deaths. And that was before. And we are a population of going to 80 million people. So something that I'm very worried about in the Netherlands, and we've been doing a lot of work lately to try to actually help families. Certainly the government, but also help families to even budget even better. And the ones that actually are in danger to get into financial trouble to actually help them out. The only thing that is always very troubling is that, you know, having financial stress and financial troubles is a big taboo. And people didn't want to talk about it. And it takes an average five years for a household to really ask for help. And then they're really into trouble. And I would love, really, my dream would be that the moment that people start any type of financial troubles that they ask for help, that we can actually help them immediately because there are a lot of things that we can actually do. And such a crisis is one of these situations. It's heartbreaking to see a lot of families having so many troubles that actually their electricity bills have actually sort of, you know, three-folded and they cannot really pay it. And your final message of hope? Well, I think if we work together, we can really move mountains. And we've actually seen it. We know we are getting to 80% of the population financially included when I started this job. We were nowhere near. And I never thought, I never dreamt we could actually do it on a worldwide basis. So if you really put yourself to it, we can actually move mountains. And I think financial inclusion, financial health, financial health above all is something we really have to be looking from an employer perspective, from a government perspective, from an NGO perspective, and from also sort of societal perspective, we have to give a lot of attention to this issue. Because in the coming 10 years, this is the make or break. This is the moment we can actually, after this crisis, we can redesign the financial system to make it work for the people. That really when they have a financial product, it's really going to help them become, have better financial lives in the future and less worry. Your Majesty, Queen Maxima, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you very much.