 Thanks a lot Reed. So Ruth are you still here? No, I'd love to meet your son though. So the world belongs to me now What an ambitious statement a good dose of aspiration and quite a bit of audacity in it as well And I think you know at the highest level. We really are talking about about Ruth's son and The world belongs to me now, and I think the question that we're facing is what world are we going to give to Ruth's son or to Sarah to Sarah And I think the the real answer is it depends to be honest And I think if we're looking at countries that are experiencing a youth bulge It really depends it depends on how we manage some of the transitions that we've been speaking about And if we manage them well, we can see hopefully a demographic Dividend we can see increased economic opportunities and growth following these Sort of bulb youth bulge in many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Middle East as well But if we don't manage the transitions well, there could be disaster frustration social upheaval Unemployment is already highest among the youth today, but that even increasing. So that's what we're trying to do I think with the you safe consortium and with the discussion we're having today around youth financial Services now I'd love to focus a bit more on on sort of the client side of it But I can't the other panelists did it all day I'm actually going to focus a bit more on the financial service provider perspective and the policy making perspective for thinking about offering Financial services to youth but before I do that I can't help myself since we took a client centered approach to this session today I want to hear a little bit from all of you in this room and about your experiences with financial services I'm going to ask you to raise your hands as I ask different questions and apologies to folks on the webinar that I can't see So who in this room at birth? Basically got a savings account Okay, so a small number of people who by the time they were teenagers had a savings account Okay, a lot more and Who when you were a teenager you had a savings account. Were you able to do your own transactions? Okay, great. So I think again. I don't know the nationalities of everybody here in this room I assume we have primal many Americans and probably a smattering of other nationalities and I don't know where you grew up But I think it's very telling to see what's happening in this room So very few people at birth, but if you to look at countries of the Netherlands It would be completely different would be almost everybody in the room would have said yes And quite a high number as teenagers including People who actually had control over the accounts Which I think is very exciting and the answers would not be the same in most emerging markets that we would go to So now I really want to focus a bit on you know Given that in many parts of the world the answers would have been different What is the potential policy case for youth savings? And I mean the youth are obviously a really important demographic group for reasons that have been mentioned before And I'd like to to pause it that there are at least three Really great opportunities on the policymaking side the first one has been mentioned a lot already by Jamie and others Which is the asset building theory Michael Sheridan who's part of the youth safe consortium is Cogut League Lee is in the back Did a lot of work around asset building theory and the asset effect that is both a material Effect so if you build assets that is a good thing in terms of better access to education to health care to improved living living standards a housing standards pardon me, but also behavioral Effects, which which Alex and others touched upon the better cognitive skills the future orientation So policymaking case for asset building very important the second one that I would describe it is around good financial habits So very early on building good financial habits And we I think all of us even the ones that are no longer such kids in the room Know that what we start to do early in life. We tend to have her rapid uptake We tend to remember it the practice that also Alex mentioned being very important the third Aspect from a policymaking perspective that I think makes youth savings important is the fact that many countries actually have an explicit Objective to increase their growth savings rate and the US is one country where that's not doing so well on this front But it's important both from a household perspective So the household having more savings to be able to deal with vulnerabilities to be able to manage shocks that life will bring But also at the macro national level having capital for investment is very important But there are challenges and these have come up actually through the questions and answers Period so first of all the issue of legal age to enter into a contract So in most countries you become a major at 16 or 18 or even 21 in some countries And you need to be of that legal age to open a formal relationship with a formal financial institution And I think here what's I think exciting is we're seeing some differentiation now between the opening of the contract and the Ownership of the contract of the contract of the bank account and the transacting And we're seeing different regulators around the world trying to build in flexibility to allow minors to enter into contract So even if for example, they have to have an adult with them to open the account They might be able to transact on their own especially when it comes to depositing Even though for withdrawals they might need to have that adult with them But maybe the adult will not be able to withdraw alone if the minor is not there So I think there is exciting things happening on that front and there was a question asked about consumer protection I think we have to remember how ever strongly want to advocate for youth savings that there are real Consumer protection reasons for having legal age of contracts, and I think we shouldn't forget that The second sort of question mark out there and this came up also around the policymaking side is the documentation needed to open Savings account. I mean the good news is that around the world when we speak about financial inclusion There are exciting things happening in terms of relaxing documentation requirements as Appropriate so for example the financial action task force a standard-setting body that deals with know your customer regulations for example is Actually has explicitly said we need to have tiered know your customer regulations So if you're talking about very small account balances, we should be able to allow less stringent Less stringent regulations and so school IDs was mentioned as one example of relaxing the documentation requirements So these were sort of three positive things on the policymaking side to question mark concerns outstanding I'm going to very quickly now move to the financial service providers And had asked you know more questions about the financial service provider perspective and here I think there's a lot of opportunities Out there for financial service providers to be interested in offering savings accounts to the young I think the most powerful one is this idea of building loyal lifetime time a loyal lifetime customer base if You acquire a person early in their lives into your financial institution if you serve them Well and meet their evolving needs over time Likelihood is that you'll keep them and there was a study done in six European countries including France and Germany that actually saw that 85% of people never changed their bank in their lifetime. So good develop developed country experience there and I think Lisa you mentioned cross-selling when you were talking and the importance of that so the idea is that if you acquire client young with savings over the over the years you can cross sell different products to them and make them Very attractive even if they're not attractive on a product base as a client a total client value They could be quite attractive the second sort of I think Very up positive point from a financial service provider perspective is the idea that youth Have networks that are very important. So if you get the youth in they're often early adopters of new things including technology Including perhaps formal financial services. So if you get them in early You might be able to get their parents into your bank down the road their friends into the bank down the road Which would also reduce your cost of acquiring new clients a Third positive point with regard to financial service providers and those of you who come from the microfinance side Will will know that we have seen some saturation in some markets like Bosnia I'm like Nicaragua like India around very specific client segments And around very specific products. So increasingly we're seeing some providers saying I won't want to and I need to expand My market share and I can't do it by still targeting that one type of clientele I need to develop new client segments And so in those countries that are facing competitive pressures The youth client segment could be a quite exciting market to go after and finally and frankly not to be I think neglected is this concept of brand and building an image for strong corporate social social responsibility that can be a way for Commercial institutions to down the line Look at a client segment seriously. It starts it as commercial responsibility, but could evolve But and I only have two points on sort of the real thorny issues that financial service providers face But they're really important ones and both of my points have the word profitability in them with a question mark So the short-term Profitability for the financial service provider to offer savings account to youth is uncertain I think we just have to be very clear about that and it's one of the reasons I actually wanted to start with the public policy case Because I think it's also important to remember the case may be a public policy case And the reasons are obvious small-balance accounts into themselves forget just youth You know are costly and often not profitable on a product standalone product basis Although again from a client total client value perspective may be profitable And so they're real Challenges there at least again showed the info the data from at least the four pilots that we're not really so far It's early early early days, but so far mostly looking at in-school youth So if then if you're talking about getting to out of school youth, which I think we would want to low-income youth That's gonna drive the cost up most likely. So that's a real challenge and unfortunately my second point The long-term profitability is unclear as well And so, you know, we know that most many many boards across all kinds of institutions are conservative And they want to know up front, you know, when am I gonna break even on this and when am I gonna start making profits on this? However, we also know that boards with vision I think think about things somewhat differently and in a lot of the conversations that we've had with the 15 or so Financial service providers that are mentioned in a paper. That's outside when we get to your drinks You'll see that often they have a strategic vision To go out to go for the youth market and to go to this market with savings products They have a strategic long-term vision. They frankly don't necessarily do the math Right away. They eventually will always do the math So eventually we've got to crack this profitability nut Technology could be a real piece of it in terms of sort of reducing transaction costs and reducing the costs of acquiring clients And staying in touch with them But I do think Some of the discussion needs to be reframed from the immediate business case to really understand strategically why would a smart Commercial financial institution care about this this client segment Now the cocktail will be yours soon my friends, but I do want to Leave you with a couple of areas. I'm a bit like Alex. I like next steps that I think requires More thought more energy more study And I think this is really important because I am seeing in certain circles to be very frank with you this almost advocacy fervor for youth savings and although I have an inner Advocate for youth savings I also I'm careful because I know from the microfinance world what backlash can mean if you overstate things without the evidence base So food for thought in terms of areas that require more more investigation and reflection the first piece Is really better understanding and getting more data on the social impact of having youth Access saving services intuitively it makes so much sense to me I spent a lot of my time in Europe growing up and it just makes so much sense But we need the data and we need the data from developing countries not just developed countries Um, I think we also need to better understand at the national level How different parts of government can work together to really try and create smart incentives to get youth to save So it's not just the ministry of finance. It could be the ministry of youth the ministry of sports There are really many different parts of government often at the national level interested in youth And so how do they come together to create the right set of incentives? I think is really important Thirdly, I think we need more innovation more experimentation on the provider side I think we need to understand what is different about serving youth. Is it the product design? Is it the marketing channel? Is it the marketing itself? Is it financial capability? Probably a little bit of all of the above but we need to better understand these different pieces and what's important What needs to be different and how they interplay with each other We got if we do eventually have to get the numbers in terms of the profit and business case We have to be able to figure that figure this out down the line and my final final word will be To really again if we think about the world and where we're trying to go complex lives that these youth face Often intertwining as Sonia said all three transitions once And so I think we need to really think of the set of interventions that respond to their needs holistically And I think holistically both in terms of the financial services We're talking about savings here, which is a critical saving a product But probably they need a range of different financial services And They also need non financial services. So understanding that full set of interventions That youth will need while each of us in the different roles that we place Also, I think saying focus in terms of the areas of expertise that we bring to the table To then meet client needs is what I think is ahead of ahead of us So with those few words, I have the honor of on behalf of new america foundation to invite you to drinks and continued conversation right outside Thank you very much for your attention