The Annual Meeting of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) in Bali confirmed medium-term plan of the world financial authorities to shift towards fintech market (Bali Fintech Agenda, BFA), which consists of 12 points.

According to Kommersant, the compromise formula is evident in the first point of the declaration: World Bank, which sees social and economic perspectives of these technologies, has certainly influenced the cautious position of IMF in fintech approaches.  

World Bank thinks that fintech will allow certain small countries and poorest states to improve the penetration of financial services, increase the depth of global financial markets and opportunities of cross-border payments, i.e. the level of financial inclusion on the whole.

“There are around 1.7 billion adults without access to financial services,” Managing Director of International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde emphasized, making it clear that fintech can solve this issue.

The newspaper notes that the World Bank has stressed on many occasions that the first developments in the sphere (mobile payments in Africa and network of payment terminals in Near East and the Philippines) solve the problem with inclusion faster than the traditional financial systems.

Other points of the declaration cover the existing risks of using new instruments for money laundering by terrorist structures (AML/CFT), as well as growing dangers of destabilization of this sector, caused by cybercrimes.

The document also covers the possibility of “deeper understanding of evolution of world financial system, which will be provided by joint work on BFA with the hope that these efforts will allow to develop international cooperation on monitoring of world finances.

The partner of Fintech section is