By Edward Dankwah, GNA
Accra, Nov. 05, GNA – Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Financial Health (UNSGSA), has called for a shift from expanding access to financial services to improving the financial health and long-term security of individuals.
She said although Ghana had made remarkable progress in financial inclusion, with about 81.5 per cent of the population having access to financial services, the focus must now be on whether people were experiencing better financial lives.
Queen Máxima was speaking at a high-level roundtable discussions hosted by the World Bank Group in Accra, bringing together the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC), to discuss how Ghana can strengthen the financial health and retirement security of informal workers, mobilize domestic savings and channel more long-term capital towards productive investment.
It also focused on saving for wealth creation and old-age protection, from savings to financial resilience and connecting informal workers to capital markets.
Queen Máxima, who said she had been working on financial inclusion since 2009, noted that access to financial services was only a means to an end and must be complemented by savings, insurance, pensions and other measures that strengthened people’s financial resilience.
She explained that effective day-to-day financial management involves helping people manage their income, preparing budgets, accessing financial planning tools and obtaining liquidity when faced with cash constraints.
On resilience, she said individuals needed protection against unexpected events, including health challenges, accidents, fires, economic disruptions and weather-related disasters.
“Financial products such as weather, health and life insurance, as well as emergency savings, are essential in helping individuals withstand such shocks without undermining their financial stability,” she added.
Queen Máxima identified long-term savings as another important dimension, stating that people needed to plan towards major life goals such as their children’s education, housing and retirement.
For financial service providers, she said, promoting financial health also made good business sense because financially healthy clients were generally more loyal, used more financial products and maintained stronger portfolios.
Queen Máxima further emphasised the importance of emergency savings, explaining that even well-designed pension schemes could become difficult for individuals to sustain when they lacked funds to deal with immediate financial emergencies.
She said people could hardly concentrate on retirement decades ahead when they were worried about meeting an unexpected financial need the following day.
Explaining her particular interest in Ghana’s financial health agenda, Queen Máxima said the country had achieved significant progress over the past two decades in expanding financial access and strengthening its financial system.
She noted that improvements in the macroeconomic environment and inflation management were also creating more favourable conditions for long-term financial planning and investment in the real economy.
Queen Máxima called for greater attention to the needs of informal sector workers, who accounted for about 80 per cent of the population, stressing the need to develop appropriate financial products and strategies that could effectively reach them.
Madam Nathalie Kouassi- Akon, IFC Division Director for West Africa Gulf of Guinea, called for efforts to move beyond expanding access to financial services to ensuring that individuals achieve lasting financial security and resilience.
She said although Ghana had made significant progress in financial inclusion, with more than eight in 10 adults having access to financial services, access alone did not guarantee financial wellbeing.
Madam Kouassi-Akon said the challenge was to ensure that financial inclusion translated into the ability of individuals, particularly informal and low-income workers, to withstand financial shocks and secure their future.
“The World Bank Group is supporting Ghana to strengthen its financial sector and expand long-term savings and investment opportunities through capital market development, green bonds and domestic capital mobilisation initiatives,” she stressed.
The IFC Division Director called for stronger collaboration among regulators, pension providers, investors, financial institutions and innovators to identify scalable solutions and make concrete commitments towards improving financial outcomes for Ghanaians.
She said the ongoing discussions provided an opportunity to build on Ghana’s financial inclusion gains and promote long-term financial health and economic opportunities.
GNA
Edited by Benjamin Mensah