 I'm very pleased to welcome to the studio, Sasha Polvarini, who is the Senior Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and also the Chairman of the Focus Group for Digital Financial Services, which is why we're all here today, Sasha. Thank you very much for being with us in the studio. It's going to be a very busy week for you. Thanks for having me. Well, before we go any further, just remind us why you're here, why this group exists. What's it for? So we are here for the last meeting of the year of the Focus Group for Digital Financial Services for Financial Inclusion. This is the fourth meeting we are having and we still have three to go next year. The Focus Group was created exactly in December last year, so this is our anniversary, if you want, the first year in life. And the idea was to have a forum for discussion where regulators from the financial services sector and the telecommunications sector could meet, realizing that at the international and local level the dialogue between these two regulators is not always happening in a framed, constructive, organized way. It could be very casual, very occasional, not necessarily consistent. And we also wanted to include, of course, the private sector, because regulation and policy needs to be implemented then by the industry. So the private sector has an important say in everything that has been adopted from the regulatory perspective from regulators. The idea is really to create this forum for discussion where we have all representative of the payment digital financial services value chain represented in one single place. And this is probably the uniqueness of this Focus Group, having really different players, different stakeholders with different interests and background. And discuss how digital financial services can be better regulated, knowing that many developing countries that are trying to adopt digital financial services to promote financial inclusion and achieve financial inclusion objectives are somehow struggling to regulate them properly. So we really think about tools, guidelines, best practices, principles, toolkits that this group can develop so that can fast track policy making and policy reform and local level. So we are here for our end of the year meeting to take stock of what the group has done in the last 12 months and really progress the debate on some of the major issues. And what's the urgency here? What big difference is it going to make to people's lives to have more access to banking services? We think at the Gates Foundation, but we are also consistent with our partners, like the World Bank, SIGAP, AFI. We think that access to the right tools at the right time can make really a difference for low-income households. The difference in terms of the ability to seize opportunities in terms of business, so creating a new business or growing business, but also the opportunity to weather risk in a much more sustainable way. So events like disease in a family or a funeral, but positive events like a wedding can be really capital intensive, a push a household into poverty or keep it the household into poverty. So really having the access to the right financial tools at the right moment can provide the ability for a household of poor people to lift themselves out of poverty. Okay. If they don't have access to those services, it makes life that much more difficult for them. And we're talking around, well, over 2 billion people. Right. And are you expectant that this is the start of a process which is going to lead to ending that situation so that everyone has access to financial services in some form? Right. So 2 billion people is a huge number. And we're talking about 2 billion people living with less than $2 per day. Of course, the 2 billion people, the more billion people that are living with $5 per day are not super better off than $2 per day. So, I mean, the level of poverty can be varied. It's a starting point for us. So we know that most developing countries now have a financial inclusion strategy, and many more are working on national financial inclusion strategy. And the digital financial services is becoming a pillar of this strategy, simply because the realization that even being poor doesn't prevent people from having access to a mobile phone, owning it or using it from friends or relatives. So that's a light infrastructure that already exists, and that can be leveraged to really provide access to basic and affordable financial services for the poor. So really we are moved by the belief that this technology can really represent the first step on the ladder for poor people that then become much more familiar with these services and move up on the ladder using insurance, savings and loans, so not just payment system, and have access to basic financial services that can be really helpful for them and their welfare. Well, as you said, we're speaking a year after this process kicked off. In the short term, the short feature, what would be some real specific examples where you can say, yep, we've made real progress there? What are you looking for in the next two years? So as I said, the whole objective of the focus group is to develop some tools that can be used off the shelf almost by regulators to fast track reform. So for instance, if we look about interoperability as an issue, which is policy and non-policy at the same time, a number of countries and regulators are looking at interoperability and interoperable solutions. So I have a bank account or mobile wallet with an operator. I want to send money to you. You are on a different system. Is that happening? Or I'm just able to send money to people who have the same account in the same bank or with the same telecommunication company. Interoperability creates choices and of course increases functionalities and easy to transact. So it's certainly something that we want to promote in the medium-long term, something that we should be achieved. Now, how to do it? Do regulators know when the market is ready? And of course, a lot of resistance from the industry because if I have to build an agent network to provide my cash in and cash out services to poor customers, I don't want anybody else to use my network. I invested in millions or in thousands of agents and now all of a sudden there's a free lunch for someone else. So how do we strike the right balance? Now, through the interoperability working group of the focus group, we are trying to see, okay, what is the roadmap that can lead to interoperable systems starting from maybe account to account and then to network to network and then other levels of interoperabilities. And interoperability doesn't mean only technical issues like my technical protocol interact and speak to your technical protocol. It means also having the right rules, the right regulations that needs to be consistent with the existing framework. And there should be business rules that allow all parties to be happy. So how do we share revenues that are generated through these product and services? So all this needs to be done in a consistent and proper way with the industry being consulted. So if this group is able to create a toolkit or provide guiding principles to regulators, at least they have a starting point where they can start a reflection with the industry and fast track that process. The same thing for consumer protection. How do we develop a proper framework for consumers? When the market is at a very early stage of development, we probably have maybe a million customers and the target is 10 million customers or 50 million customers. So I guess that the framework should be looking differently if we have 50 millions or 1 million. 1 million because consumer protection translates into cost. There's no free lunch there as well. So how do we make sure that we prioritize the right requirements? So do we need to have a fully fledged system for data protection on day one or it's better to have a call center so that the customer who's making a mistake has a number to call and they can maybe redress the situation which put them in a sort of uncomfortable situation. And probably transparency of prices and tariffs plus a call center and redress mechanism is more important than a fully fledged data protection system which can come later when we have 5 million, 10 million, 50 million customers and then it becomes really an issue how to protect those data. So we can look forward to a comprehensive toolkit on a level playing field. That's what you're all working towards and I do wish you all the best with that. Thank you very much for being with us today. Sasha Pulverini. Thank you.