 Welcome to the Fiji Symposium 2019 here in Cairo in Egypt, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today, Mr. Harish Natarajan, who is the lead for the Payments Systems Development Group for the World Bank. Thanks. Welcome to the studio. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Now, 1.7 billion people remain unbanked and yet two-thirds of them have a mobile phone. I wanted to ask you what do you think would be the best way to achieve the stimulation of digital financial inclusion? There is, of course, this is a complex context and it is not one single solution which will address the problem. So, at the World Bank, we do what is called as the FINDEX survey every three years. And that has a question which asks why is it that you don't have a bank account, for the people who don't have a bank account. And it's very illustrative to look at the reasons which come out. And some of the reasons include things like the more obvious ones like I don't have enough cash or it's too expensive or some people say I don't need it. Somebody, some member in my family has it. Some people say I don't have enough, the right documentation to open a bank account. So there are various reasons. So, I think what is important is to really look at why they don't have a bank account. And the top reasons are typically that it's too expensive, I don't have enough money in my account or they feel they don't have the right documentation with them. So I think any solution, any strategy which we have to take to advance financial inclusion has to address those. And digital is a big part of this, digital is a big part of reducing the cost. Mobile phones give you an option for lowering the cost of provision of services to the end customer. And then also, more importantly, also at the agent level. So it is not just the individual with the mobile phone, but also the agents who can be used by banks to expand their banks and non-bank institutions, to expand their distribution network, many of them will just have mobile phones. So they don't have to have specialized equipment and so on. So mobile phones and digital technology in general are a key element of that. And what about the distinction between smartphones and future phones? Of course, there are certain things you can do with a smartphone, you might not be able to do that well with a future phone. But in general, the basic technologies of SMS and the USSD, which is available in almost all the, I think, all the future phones, is adequate to provide a reasonable quality of service. But of course, the aspiration should be to move towards better data networks, more universal access to broadband and so on. And that of course will improve the quality of experience for the individual and what more they could do with them. And how do you see the fintech sector reshaping digital financial services? The digital financial services as a term and fintech came at different points in time. It is very difficult to draw a clear distinction of what is fintech and what is digital financial services. So maybe one way to look at it is the digital financial services in umbrella term kind of talks about any form of digitization versus fintech which is more about disruption and more transformative usage of technology. But it's all a continuum and it's not a very precise legal term. So the point is about, when you talk about fintech is about what does it really represent and it represents really innovative use of existing and in some cases new technologies, new business models and new approaches. And this brings in new players and then also very different ways of doing traditional processes. So for example, mobile money of course is a good example but this preceded by at least seven, eight years this whole term fintech when it came into mainstream usage. But that represents a very good kind of sample of what a fintech development could look like. It represents that you are transforming the distribution model, you transform the way the service is provided and you transform the way the customer interacts with the institution which is providing the service. What fintech is bringing in new is now all these platform based models being able to unbundle various services. So traditionally whenever there was a payment service to be offered it was tied to a bank account and banks were the ones providing various services. Mobile money and all these telecom entities and other non-bank players when they started offering e-money services they in some sense took away the payment service as a standalone activity. And now it is actually going beyond and saying that even though the bank account might be kept to the bank you might still be able to transact on the bank account by using the service of a third party provider. And then similarly it comes to loans and insurance and so on. So I think that's a very different business model and that could have a dramatic impact on non-digital financial inclusion. There are also technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and all of that has some implications. For example artificial intelligence, machine learning could have a much more effective customer service kind of interaction. It could really help in also automating a lot of things which banks do in terms of analytics and so on. So it has a transformative impact and it's all part of a continuum. And finally the World Bank is involved in this initiative, there's plenty of initiatives it could be involved in. I just wanted to find out what's specifically interesting about this one, what's unique about it? The World Bank is a development institution and we have what we call as the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. And if you look at it to end extreme poverty and also to give more economic opportunities which is what the boosting shared prosperity implies, one needs to have economic opportunities. And to have economic opportunities you need to have access to finance to be able to manage your day-to-day transactions and so on, being able to manage your risks like through insurance and so on and be able to make long-term investments for which you kind of have access to long-term assets for which you need to have loans. So all of this is very closely linked to the twin goals of the World Bank and that is the reason why we are focusing on this particular objective and we have what is called as the universal financial access 2020 objective and as part of that there are series of initiatives and Fiji is one of them. Arish, thank you very much indeed for joining us in the studio and we look forward to catching up with you in the future. Thank you, I look forward to. Thank you.