Pacific Islands Regional Initiative (PIRI)

PIRI was created at the 2014 Global Policy Forum (GPF) in Trinidad and Tobago and officially launched the following year in Dili, Timor-Leste, with the vision of making financial services accessible to all Pacific Islanders. The region faces access challenges due to factors including geographically dispersed islands, small populations and limited banking infrastructure.

The initiative invites member institutions to share in a common vision while working toward ensuring that financial services are widely accessed throughout the region. With PIRI, AFI has created a unique model of south-south engagement and peer learning that aims to provide all low-income Pacific Islanders with access to formal and informal financial services.

PIRI has five objectives: remove policy barriers to improve access; use technology for financial service provision and access; empower and protect through financial literacy and education; collaborate with stakeholders to advance financial inclusion in the region; and use data for smart policymaking and monitoring.

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Focus Areas

Create opportunities to systematically build knowledge on technological innovations that are relevant for financial inclusion and mitigate the challenges of de-risking.
Provide regulatory guidance led by AFI’s Digital Financial Services Working Group and originating from peer learning efforts among AFI members from both within and outside the region.
Allow for systematic and focused dialogue with private sector, development partners and other international stakeholders to enhance mutual understanding of the risk profiles of FinTech innovations.

Coordinate support activities and offerings from stakeholders amid resource constraints by policymakers and regulators in PIRI.
Enable test-and-learn approaches for FinTech for financial inclusion, such as regulatory sandboxes, innovation hubs or RegLabs, which could also support the application of approaches such as tiered KYC, eKYC (including digital identification) and RegTech.
Undertake capacity building activities for the staff of PIRI central banks, such as practical exposure to FinTech innovations in pioneering countries and training for regulators in collaboration with technical partners on relevant issues such as cybersecurity and anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorim (AML/CFT).