As of 2018, more than 90 countries have publicly committed to promoting financial inclusion—and the number will continue to grow. Financial regulators and supervisors in these countries are discovering the value of a structured approach in helping them to implement policies and strategies on financial inclusion (I) alongside their core responsibilities to promote micro- and macroprudential stability (S) and financial integrity (I) and to protect financial consumers (P)—objectives collectively referred to as I-SIP.
This Toolkit uses lessons learned from CGAP’s extensive analysis of real-life country experiences. It helps financial regulators and supervisors to implement a structured approach for managing the complex interplay among the I-SIP objectives – the I-SIP Approach. The approach outlined in the toolkit has been used successfully in different policy-making environments and can be adapted to fit your needs.
Financial regulators and supervisors make important policy decisions and often face serious questions and problems:
- Your institution wants to address financial inclusion, but you have other objectives that concern you: stability, integrity, and protection.
- Your institution often makes decisions based on intuition, but you are concerned about unintended consequences.
- It is difficult to establish a structured process in your organization that will enable you to properly evaluate or discuss a key policy issue.
- You are facing an increasingly fast-changing and complex financial landscape and have little time to assess a proposed policy intervention.
This Toolkit is designed to be accessible and to take you through a defined process to make policy decisions and to effectively implement them. It features a brief overview of the I-SIP Approach, four things to keep in mind as you begin, and the structured process rendered in seven steps. It is complete with annexes that give you more in-depth information and links to other resources and a workbook you can use to document your ideas and progress.