• Representatives from Bank Negara Malaysia, Bank of Thailand and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas
• Partners (Visa, Ant Financial Services Group)
• Local stakeholders (Touch ‘n Go, Ernst & Young, National Cyber Security Agency, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Malaysia Competition Commission)
• AFI team

“Selamat Pagi” (Good morning) and on behalf of AFI MU I wish to welcome everyone to the Knowledge exchange programme between BNM, BoTH, BSP and CBR meeting here in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. It is indeed a pleasure to host this programme in Malaysia which is where AFI HQ is located.

AFI member countries represent diversity in terms of geography, socio-economic development, cultural context and the levels of financial inclusion. This necessitates a focused regional and country-based approach towards coming up with policy solutions to address financial inclusion challenges. Member countries that are advanced in their financial inclusion journey have complex challenges and priorities to be addressed and need innovative policy responses to advance their financial inclusion objectives. Moreover, AFI has also received requests from members for specific tailored knowledge exchange programmes for them to learn from certain member institutions.

In this context, AFI with extensive stakeholder consultations has co-created this knowledge exchange programme for the members to not only learn but also share on relevant topics focusing on their country specific implementation challenges that can receive practical recommendations from peers who are facing similar challenges and issues.

This Knowledge Exchange Programme will take a policy thematic approach led by individual member institutions and identified stakeholders who are experts on specific topics to bring the industry or private sector perspectives into the discussion. The programme has three main pillars:

1. Digital Financial Services: Addressing policy interventions to create an enabling DFS ecosystem with focus on innovative payment solutions such as QR code and Digital Banking innovations to advance financial inclusion without compromising on related risks. We note increasingly that linking DFS to the platform economy generates the much-needed efficiencies for users of financial services.
2. MSME Finance: Identifying policy solutions to leverage new and innovative models to reduce SME financing gap.
3. Consumer Protection and Financial literacy: Learn on best practices on Digital Financial literacy and consumer protection. Especially given the ever-changing digital financial services environment where data privacy and data abuse through unauthorized mining is becoming of increasing concern.

I believe the team has worked hard in making sure that there is good balance of panelists for each session who will be able to provide inputs from not only the regulator point of view but also the fintech players or industry perspectives into the discussion.

As I conclude, we hope you find this platform of mutual knowledge exchange program to be meaningful to assist you in developing policy solutions and regulatory tools in addressing the areas of SME financing, digital innovations, competition policies and digital financial literacy. I wish to thank the facilitators and resource persons and you a successful deliberation.

Enjoy your stay in Malaysia and I hope you have time to also explore the country while you are here. Thank you.  Terima Kasih