The city of Apia, Samoa will come alive as it plays host to the 4th Annual Pacific Islands Regional Initiative (PIRI) Leaders Roundtable forum. In collaboration with the Central Bank of Samoa (CBS), the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) will co-host the forum from 5-8 June, 2018 in Apia, Samoa.

More than 100 participants from AFI member institutions in the Pacific Islands including small island states from Seychelles and The Bahamas, and stakeholders, both local and abroad, are expected to attend the forum. The four-day forum will kick off with the meeting of PIRI’s Expert Group on Financial Inclusion (EGFIP) on 5 June, 2018, together with a training on financial inclusion sex-disaggregated data, supporting the Denarau Action Plan for gender and women’s financial inclusion.

The forum will then be followed by two days of high-level regional initiative meetings and conclude with a regulatory training on digital financial services (DFS), as part of AFI’s Public-Private Platform (PPD), on 8 June, 2018.

Under the overarching theme of “FinTech for Financial Inclusion,” participants will learn the untapped potential of FinTech disruption in developing and emerging economies, regulatory and supervisory frameworks, and its risks and challenges. The forum is also expected to deliver some high-level recommendations and action plan on FinTech for the region.

The launch of PIRI established a long-term program with a common vision to ensure financial services are widely accessed throughout a region. PIRI members implement a peer-learning and knowledge-sharing approach to a variety of financial inclusion policy areas highly relevant for all small-island nations in the Pacific. 

PIRI FinTech workstreams include: enabling test-and learn approaches, FinTech knowledge repository, additional and systematic regulatory guidance, Public-Private Dialogue (PPD) and global exchange, and rationalization of multiple support activities and stakeholder offerings.

Stay tuned on Twitter for live updates from #afiPIRI on 5-8 June, 2018.

About PIRI

The Pacific Islands Regional Initiative (PIRI) was created in 2014 at the Global Policy Forum (GPF) in Trinidad and Tobago and officially launched on May 2015 in Dili, Timor-Leste. PIRI members recognize that continuity is required to better address the unique constraints to increasing financial inclusion in the Pacific. Establishing this regional initiative provides a long-term opportunity for member institutions to share a common vision, while working toward ensuring financial services are widely accessed throughout a region with one of the highest unbanked rates globally due to factors that include geographically dispersed islands with low density populations, and challenges related to physical and banking infrastructure.