How Can Financial Inclusion Play a Part in Alleviating Poverty?

Are we going to reach the United Nations’ goal to eradicate poverty by 2030? If not, what proven tools do we have to accelerate progress toward this goal? In this episode, we explore how financial inclusion can play a part in alleviating poverty. Our guests dive into the power of microfinance, discussing its real-world impact in underserved communities and highlighting both the challenges and opportunities.

Guests:
Elina Scheija, Chief Economist, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
Dibyajyoti Pattanaik, Director, Annapurna Finance
Paul Hailey, Head of Impact & ESG, responsAbility

Hosted by:
Robert Widén, Director Nordics, responsAbility

Transcript

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Welcome to Voices of Impact Investing, the responsAbility Investments podcast. Are we going to reach the United Nations goal to eradicate poverty by 20-30? If not, what proven tools do we have to accelerate progress toward this goal? In this episode, we explore how financial inclusion can play a part in alleviating poverty. Our guests dive into the power of microfinance, discussing it's real world impact in underserved communities and highlighting both the challenges and opportunities. Today we can celebrate the historically low levels of poverty, but also acknowledging the massive challenges that we still have ahead of us to get where we want to be, which is a world free from poverty in all its forms by 20-30. Whether their access to education, to healthcare, savings, their interaction with the banking services, insurance services, these are all significantly different when they have experienced financial inclusion and the financial literacy programs. In an emerging market context, small businesses are the biggest drivers of growth. They are responsible for between 75 to 90% of new jobs created in emerging markets. So these are essential engines of growth. And so it's important for an organization that responsAbility then to really try to seek to support financial institutions that really target those groups. The information provided in this podcast is given for informational purposes only and should be considered neither as investment advice nor as investment recommendation. No liability shall be accepted for the accuracy and completeness of the information. The views presented in this podcast are those of the individual participants and are not necessarily endorsed by responsAbility. Past performance is neither an indicator nor a guarantee for future results. Now, on the occasion of the 2024 UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Robert Widén, Director, Nordics at responsAbility, hosts the discussion on how expanding access to financial services can unlock opportunities for individuals and businesses in emerging markets. How can financial inclusion play a part in alleviating poverty? Over to Robert and his guests for today's episode. To start off, I'd like to welcome everyone whom is listening in today. Today marks an important day, United Nation International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. So again, thank you for joining us in exploring what role financial inclusion can play in alleviating poverty. To help us tackle today's topic, we are very fortunate to have a remarkable panel and I'm really excited to pick their brains today. 1st, we welcome Elina Scheija, the Chief Economist of the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency, or in short, Sida. Elina leads Sida analytical efforts at the country level focus on improving analysis, financing for development and the green transition, which makes her insights particularly relevant in today's discussion. Additionally, Elina co-chairs the OECD DAC Community of Practice on Poverty and worked as a senior specialist at in Employment and Poverty diagnostics in the International Labour Organization at ILO. She also worked at the World Bank. That is quite the resume and we're so glad to have you here today, Elena. Good to be here. Thank you. We also have our very own Paul Hailey. He is Head of Impact and ESG at responsAbility. Paul manages and measures the impact of responsibilities initiatives as the lead author of the responsAbility Impact Report and other other publications. He brings a wealth of knowledge in impact investing. Furthermore, and I've and I've gotten this confirmed by his students, Paul is a very popular guest lecture on impact investing and sustainability at HTC in Paris. It's a pleasure to have you with us today and thank you very much for having me. Thank you, Paul. And finally, we have Dibyajyoti Pattanaik, executive from one of India's leading microfinance institutions and Apurna Finance. Dibyajyoti is an expert in microfinance with over 50 years in the field. His leadership roles in organizations like the Microfinance Institution Network and Oris Social Financial Inclusions demonstrates his deep commitment to advancing financial inclusion. He has significantly contributed to the transferation of Annapurna Finance, now one of India's leading microfinance institutions with more than 1200 branches across India. The most recent data estimates that around 1.4 billion adults worldwide are unbanked, meaning they do not have access to basic financial service such as a bank, a bank account. This is a quite staggering number. But with that said, let's begin. Elena, given your impressive background as we all heard experience on the topic of poverty, also you being an economist, perhaps set the scene for today's topic. We'd be happy to do that in actually, in the bigger scheme of things, things are not looking that bad. We're coming out of an era of historically rapid poverty reduction, and over the past 30 years, hundreds of millions of people have managed to escape extreme poverty. The rate of poverty reduction has been as high as 100 percentage points per year, which is huge. That is unique in our history and something to celebrate. However, in the more recent history, the pace of poverty reduction has pretty much stalled, and during the pandemic we experienced a historic increase in the poverty figures. The increase wasn't historic because it was particularly big. It was historic because it happened. We haven't seen a reversal in these trends before. And we also got a healthy reminder of how fragile the situation still is and how millions of people are just above the very low level of of extreme poverty. So we're not out of the woods yet today. We have caught up with that increase in poverty and we're now back on a more declining trends in in poverty. But that trend is very, very much plateauing. And even today the almost 700 million people living in extreme income poverty. On top of that, we know that poverty is more than income. If we look at the face of poverty and people's entitlements to basic education, health, decent living standards, we know that still almost 1.1 billion people are living in multidimensional poverty as measured by the US Multidimensional Poverty Index. So the situation today is more complex. We know that the people who are left in extreme poverty after the rapid decline are facing a more complex environment and more diverse challenges. People who are living in poverty are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. They are increasingly living in conflict and fragile contexts. And the rapid economic development that was able to create proactive jobs and create pathways out of poverty in the 90s is slowing down and it's not being that generator of poverty reaction today. So if I would sum it up, when we take stock of the development today, we can celebrate the historically low levels of poverty, but also acknowledging the massive challenges that we still have a have ahead of us to get where we want to be, which is a world free from poverty in all its forms by 20-30. Thank you for that answer. I mean, although it's great that we're historically low, it still seems like we have a a lot of work to do now if we try to look a bit ahead. I would like you to answer a question, Will we reach SDG 1 by 2030? So for everyone not knowing what SDG 1 is, that is goal one of the SDGS and end poverty in all its forms everywhere. Elina, if I ask you to answer that question, can we achieve SCG 1 by 2030? What's what's your response? If we look at the current projections from today's slightly less than 700 million, we're expected to be at around somewhat more than 600 million people still living in poverty in 20-30. So not much progress until 2030 is is projected and continuing the way we've been working is not going to get us there. I mean that that doesn't sound too great. I mean, let me rephrase the question. What, what will, what will need to happen for us to get there? If you perhaps could comment on that, happy to. I'd also prefer that positive and proactive attitude. A lot can be done and a lot can change. And as I was, as I was discussing earlier, we are facing a more complex set of challenges and in order to reach the last mile of, of poverty in reduction, we need to get better at understanding these interrelated dimensions of poverty and tackle a broader set of constraints. So, and the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency where we, where we live, where I work, I've been working a lot lately. I mean, you perhaps work at staying at adult this as well. That's so that's fine trying to balance that out anyway. We do a multidimensional poverty analysis in the countries where we engage, where we want to identify the groups who are living in poverty and also look at what is the face of poverty in these contexts, look at what are the main problems and also find pathways out of poverty in order to get the biggest bang for the for the bank that we are investing in this context. So deciding context specific solutions that were for the local circumstances is part of the answer. But even though the different countries require different solutions, they pretty much all boil down to creating enabling environment for people who are living in poverty to lift themselves out of poverty and ensuring that the institutional environment is supportive of those efforts. So if I could take financial inclusion as an example here, because this is the topic of of today's seminar. What will need to happen is for us to ensure that people who are living in poverty have access to financial services that meet their needs in order for them to start a business, create jobs for themselves and and others get a savings account that can buffer against adverse shocks or, or get an insurance and that could cover them in terms of shock. And, and here a lot of progress has already been done as we even though the introductory question said that there's a lot of people who are still unbanked and not reached by financial inclusion. 3 Three out of four adults have a bank account or some kind of account in some kind of a financial institution, more so for men than than for women. But what we also know is that many of these accounts are dormant, they're not frequently used and they don't necessarily provide the kind of services that lead out of out of poverty. So I think the focus going forward will need to be ensuring that the financial inclusion actually delivers on the promise of poverty reduction and creates the services that are that are needed. So we need product development that leads to services that are affordable, acceptable and available for the people who need them. And here we have already seen a lot of innovation in terms of the during the digital revolution, mobile banking has already increased access to financial services for many. The way of how that transfers are made and how mobile savings accounts are are becoming more prevalent and access also to insurance services to digitally incentivize them and enabled services are examples of a more modern range of financial inclusion and financial services that better meets the needs and creates pathways out of poverty. So I would like to end on a positive note despite the challenges to say that that we have the tools to do a proper diagnostics and we are learning to juggle the current Poly crisis environment in the world to find bad ways out of poverty. And there are new innovations coming that help us along the way. But what we need to do is continue innovating and also keep our commitment to reach our goals. If we're even if we're not going to get there by 20-30, we should strive to get there as soon as humanly possible. Thank you for sharing that, Elena. I, I see Dibyajyoti, you're, you're nodding as well. But I'll, I'll involve you later. And I'm glad to hear Elena's optimism. And I think I, I would actually take this moment to involve one of our other panelists. That's fine with you, Dibyajyoti. Paul, Elena. I mean, she, she covered the topic of financial inclusion and you working at responsAbility. So I would like to ask what, what role responsAbility plays in addressing financial inclusion in the developing world. Sure, but thank you, Robert. Look, I, I think the, the point to make is responsAbility is an intermediary in the sense that we are, we are a specialist impact investor which we manage funds that allow investors to invest in financial inclusion, which is impacting investing as a whole. And impacting investing is of course the, the idea of investing for both the financial return as well As for a positive environmental or social impact. So in other words, what we're doing is we're taking investor funding and we are lending it to, you know, we are lending it to local financial institutions in emerging economies who then use that money to cater to low income households and SME banks. And of course, Needless to say there are in in any country there is a financial sector of sorts. I think what we point to and what your the previous numbers point to is the fact that of course, when you look at those people or businesses that are typically excluded from access to finance, it's normally of course, you know, the bottom 60 to 80% of the country. So whatever financial sector is in place tends to cater to the easiest clients to cater to, which is to say the the richest people, the biggest businesses. So and this of course is it's one way of operating, but as we mentioned before, financial inclusion is going to have an effect. It's got to reach out beyond that. And so hence the fact that we would seek to target those kind of organisations. But I think taking a step back for a second, financial inclusion, as you know, it's a very important topic. But of course, as Elena was pointing out with discussion of the multi dimensional elements of polity, it's just one topic among many. So it's one channel by which we can seek to improve income levels, we can seek to improve quality of life. And of course, as I think Elena pointed to as well, it's it covers a lot of different areas, financial inclusion. So if we're going to reach a lot of people, it has to be part of a holistic whole. It's financial inclusion has to be about, yes, about building local infrastructure, improving regulation, building credit bureaus. But within that of course there is a very crucial role to play by the financial institutions themselves, those that are that we know are willing to cater to low income households and small businesses. So therefore there is a role to play for the investors who are willing to come in and fund and finance those organisations. Because ultimately in order to reach out to more people, which is the whole point of financial inclusion, to reach out to more people, to more businesses, those those organisations are going to need funding to scale up. And that is where organisations that responsAbility come in. We help them to scale up effectively. Now we, you know, of course one might argue at this point, well, what exactly then? You know, when we talk about the benefits of this. Well, why though, why low income households, why SMEs, you know, is that definitively? Yeah. The the path by by which we can seek to address financial inclusion. And the answer is, well, yes. Frankly, it's it is something that's critical. You mentioned before that you're. I think a lot of the people in the poll actually really weren't far off in the sense that if you'd asked us about 5 or 6 years ago, the number of people who were excluded from the financials from access to finance was 1.7 billion. It's now gone down to 1.4 billion. But it's still an extraordinarily high number and it's very persistent in a lot of places despite the promises of technology and other things. If you look at small businesses as well, that might not seem, you might think to yourself, well then just cater to the biggest businesses. But in an emerging market context, small businesses are the biggest drivers of growth. They are responsible for between 75 to 90% of new jobs created in emerging markets. So these are essential engines of growth. And so it's important for an organization like responsAbility then to really try to seek to support financial institutions that really target those groups. And that's what we would try to do. It is, you know, it's not a flash in the pan kind of thing. This is an industry that's been in place for best part of the last two decades and it's one that's still growing quite a lot as well. I mean, impact investing as a whole is growing very rapidly. There is a, a recent gin survey that showed a 14% compound annual growth rate in in impact investing over the last five years. And financial inclusion is one of the biggest themes within impact investing. So. There is a big demand in terms of, you know, in terms of the challenge that is out there if we're going to address financial inclusion, if we're going to address, you know, it's role in in, in poverty alleviation. But at the same time there is clearly a demand for investors as well. And now with organizations that responsAbility, we are able to create financial solutions that allow investors to really have a direct effect on this. One of the advantages of what we do and the, you know, and what I'm able to do when I'm standing up and talking in front of investors or in a webinar like this, is that I am able to say, well, look, when people are investing in our funds or the funds of, you know, other organisations that do what we do as well, they're able to draw a Direct Line. You have someone who is starting off putting their, you know, everyday investor putting their money into one of, you know, the, the funds that we operate, the money goes into the fund. The fund lends it to an directly to a financial institution and that financial institution lends it out to someone. So you can draw a Direct Line, straight line when someone who's investing to someone who runs a market stall in Mumbai or who runs a bakery in Quito or who run is trying to start a small business in Nairobi. So this is really what we try to do. And of course, you know, it requires us to really look very closely at these institutions to ensure that they are really doing what we say, what we want them to do. But ultimately that's the idea behind what responsAbility does. Yeah, thank you, Paul. I mean, you, you, you, you draw out the, the chain really of, of the financial inclusion. But you also mentioned that we have to watch monitor this very closely. And I, I would like to challenge you a bit as well. I mean, what, what do you see as some of the challenges for financial inclusion and how does responsAbility tackle them? It's a very good question. Look, I would say there's, there are, there are two types of issue here. One, the first is logistical, which is to say that to do what we do, there are logistical challenges in the sense that you have to, you know, we can't click on a button and just do an investment like that, right? This isn't in a secondary market. By and large, we're operating. If you want to operate in countries where the need is greatest, that means you have to go out to countries where there is relatively little capital flowing into those countries, which means that those are countries that don't have capital markets. So we hence the fact that we are doing private debt and private equity for the most part. That means that we have to go out and see the organisations ourselves. We have to do a due diligence ourselves, we have to directly interact with them. That brings certain advantages for me and my role of course, because that means we're directly in touch with these organisations. I don't have to rely on a third party data provider. I can go straight to the organization and say, look, I want an answer to this question. Can you elaborate on this more? It means we can engage directly with the organizations as well. Nonetheless, there is a logistical element to this. And then when we need, when we're looking for the data that we need for impact and ESG analysis, it means that we have to gather that directly from the institution. We can't, again, this isn't something that's available just, you know, from a, from a platform somewhere. So there is that logistical element. There is, I think, more of a what is the right word here? I would say not exactly ethical, but there there is a duty of care that you have as an investor. We have a duty of care in the sense that we all know from our own experience and from from growing up and from, you know, that when financial institutions go wrong, the consequences can be really quite damaging for individuals that are affected, but also for societies as well and economies too. So we have a real duty of care as as an investor that when we are doing this analysis, we are looking very, and this is often in a context where perhaps the regulatory framework isn't quite up to the standards that we would necessarily expect in Europe or or in parts of the developed world. So we have a duty of care to really check that these organizations have strong governance structures. We have to check that they are treating their staff correctly. We have to check especially above all that they are lending responsibly to people who often don't maybe don't have that much experience of, you know, dealing with a financial institution. That they are transparent about fees, that they are transparent about the interest rates being paid, that they treat their data correctly, that when they are trying to recover a debt, they do so in a way that is responsible and ethical and not not placing undue pressure on end clients. And this is something that is certainly in the in, in the area of financial inclusion investing. It is a topic that is absolutely core to what we do. And it has to be absolutely central if we're going to do this correctly and if we're going to fulfil what is ultimately the wish of our investors, which is to do this in a way that has a positive effect and which really doesn't do anything negative. Thank you, Paul, Very, very important answer and, and, and thank you for for clarifying that. And I and I believe this would be great bridge to you, Divya Yuti when you're on the ground in India and you can give us real content to the context. So I would like like to ask you a question. Would you say Annapurna is AI mean? Would you say Annapurna being a leading microfinance institution that you play a role in alleviating property and perhaps you can exemplify that? Yeah, Robert, thank you for inviting for this opportunity. Thanks to responsAbility, we are not enough finance in India. We are a microfinance company serving close to Indian households across the country. And I am a strong believer that, you know, financial inclusion is the most significant tool to take people out of poverty. And, and that's why Annapurna came into place, you know, with that vision too, because we, we are from Orissa, which is again, you know, poorer in terms of, you know, the geographical context in India, as you know, Elena was telling you, I also agree with that because the data is that for last decade, the, the reduction in poverty has, you know, multiple, you know, the PSR of close to 1617%. And, and in India also that's, that's also we see and that was gone down to 11%. But where we are done, a Puna plays a role. The difference between people who are participating in the financial inclusion program or are more active in to have access to the financial services. These are the people who don't have and you know, we use this, you know, metrics to understand, you know how people are at different level, you know people who are participating in the program and these are the people who are not participating. Big difference in orders are we understood that people who are participating in programs for the last five years have a significant income, close to 14% higher income vis a vis they're non participating clienting. While the water poverty program is fueled by different government initiatives, different other last programs, but we are significant contributing to that access to different assets like you know upper cup house water or toilet very significant like the participating people have 99% of them have non toilet because we find that or or you know close to 4748% people have access to clean water. These are we 2223% people having that in normal. There's a significant difference that we have created by just bringing one single product. You know that financial inclusion and, and that has also a significant impact in people's life, their quality of life, you know, whether their access to education, to healthcare, savings, their interaction with the banking services, insurance services, these are all significantly different when they have experienced financial inclusion and the financial literacy programs. Bizarrely, the people who do not have well in in general, people are getting much more access, but they have a very, very significant change. You know, in that context, the access to, you know, mobile phones, it does also very significant change in terms of, you know, people with non access availability of the program to the people who have availability of the program. So, so when we are talking about poverty, you know, it's not about the income only, it's also about your ability to access the law, you know, facilities that are required to build your life and, you know, quality of life. And, and this is very significant, you know, whether you have a better house, whether you have put a connection and they all result into better health. You know, you're spending more on education, you're spending more on asset building man health. So so when when we're talking about financial inclusion reward, it is also about the insurances, it is also about their savings, their capital. So we also try and understand how, you know, the people that are upon ourselves are behaving differently or you know, than the people who we are not starving. So we continuously do the research to understand how we have been doing that. And it's purely data-driven matrixes, which also tells and also supplemented by different you know, your program, you know, research programs of, you know, large scale research programs of the government, which also tells the you know, the story. The same like people who have access to financial inclusion or a bank account, insurance or a financial service provider like us have a better chances to come out of poverty and have a better chances to create like for example the participation domain, participation in economic activity. Now that has also has a significant change because, you know, because we have a largely being a microfinance institution provide loans to women to start a business and that has significant difference between people who otherwise would have access to that point. So that's how you know, we I, I strongly believe that while extreme poverty is a challenge was really in our strategy parting out and I agree with that because we probably will not be able to reach out to that label. But but there's a significant difference between people who, you know, that are being a financial instant program can bring in to people who would come from out of poverty and then to, you know, remain there, you know, because this this is a city, you know, at the bottom of these people are also very prone to any kind of small change, you know, in in their lifestyle. Could them take them back to poverty again? You know, I think Ellen and Paul have already told exactly about that, that they could go back. So you have to continue to keep your focus and and keep helping them putting things at the right place for them to, you know, keep growing. And, and the data is, you know, you know, notice we know we'll be so close to a million household and we have seen that difference happening now. I mean, this is really inspiring to hear. It's really with joy to to follow entrepreneur and, and, and what you do. So I mean, that is also historically, I mean, we've heard Elena and Paul talk about growth and digitalisation. So we try to be a bit more forward-looking. That's OK. Micro microfinance still seems to be a topic that is based on group lending, banking and branches and and other approaches that are mostly died out in, in the developed world. I mean where most people bank on buy. Is that likely to happen in developing countries as well or and will this sector continue to evolve as it as it has before with with the growth we see? And perhaps if you could put an apparent in that context, I mean where will you be in 10 years time? Well, Robert, as you correctly mentioned, one is digitization for sure the mature market of microfinance that the second one. And the third one is the climate risk which we are now experiencing everywhere, you know, not just confined to my state or my country, everywhere across the globe. I think these are going to be very significant differentiator of both way. In a both way, taking this whole community either out of poverty or bringing back to the community because there's a risk of this climate change could actually create a huge problem in terms of the changing livelihood, the digital divide, you know, people who are not participating in this digital journey because you're from moving everything to digital. And then there's a last section of people who would be left behind. So I think Annapurna is going to play a very significant role both in creating a safe to the changing requirement of this climate risks that are, you know, available with where you know whether to adopt, you know, give finance to the adoption or to the mitigation and simultaneously bring the whole set of people that on the phone works with to the digital marketplace to participate again otherwise. So what happens, you know, when what changed? What changed from the poverty to non poverty to be removed from that place to the is is the participation in the financial services which was not there that will be played for last 10 years now. I think the next 10 years will be play a role where we will bring them to the digital world and also create safe net for them where they will not again fall back. You know, in case of this, you know, the emerging challenge of this climate change, which is very, you know, uncertain and extreme. I mean, when you get this and, and it is also define all the, you know, standards like of all 10 years data, everything that you have, they're all like one day it will rain like every day or other. You'll get news that, you know, for last 10 years we have not seen this. So you, the data we have is over last 10 years, 15 years. But, but, but the magnitude on which things are changing is beyond that. And, and we don't have control over that. And, and this set of people, there's a last section of the people in our my country and around the world, they are actually going to face significant challenge and we have to be there to solve those problems. And so that so I think next 10 years will be higher for personalized products, you know, back with the highly take the data analytics or real time, if you know, analysis of the situation with, you know, map with the, you know, satellite data and a lot of this machine learning and AII think this is going to be a whole new world out there, You know, because the the fight is going to be go from here, You know, the the the you know, the fight against is going to mitre, you know, opponent that we're going to fight here. So so we have to also break a lot of that villain with us and then opponent is going to be there playing. Oh, wonderful. I mean, thank you for for those insights. I mean it's obviously a hard to predict the future, but it really sounds that there there's going to be some some interesting developments in in this sector. And I mean, with that said, I'm looking at time as well. I, I think we want to in involve the, the audience as well. As Rachel said in the beginning, we, we are open for, for questions. So if, if you want to ask some questions, unless you already have done so, please, please do so. And whilst we wait for, for, for the questions, I'd, I'd like to go back to Ilina and Paul. I mean, would you like to comment what DJs said? Perhaps you have your own experiences, Elena, perhaps you want to go first. Just eager to jump in. It was really, you've been sidelined for a while now. I'm sorry for that, but it's we really want to hear your thoughts. Thank you, I was listening with great interest of both the stories and I I really liked how you brought up the multi dimensional later poverty from the viewpoint of financial inclusion. So if I was highlighting that we need to understand several and tackle several problems at the same time to solve the problem poverty, it could be that one solution can tackle several problems. So with financial inclusion, you do get to the other dimensions of poverty as well. So very really that. But then on your on your point about going forward and how the how the future will look like also in terms of digital inclusion, I hear, I really think that we need to think about the full package here. Just provide just the fact that the services exist doesn't mean that they reach everybody. Not everybody's financially or digitally literate and not all the services available in local languages that they would actually reach the last mile and that not everybody can afford the data traffic as well. So as Paul was saying that it's not just investing, we need to create the channels in places where capital markets don't exist. It's the same thing for the digital services in order to close the digital divide. So if I can just throw in one recent example, we're working with another partner, GSMA, it's global industry organization for mobile network operators. They had identified that 90% of the refugee population have problems buying SIM cards because they didn't have proper IDs on them and that was a requirement for getting a SIM card. So they were excluded from these services and the digital divide was getting wider, but initiating a dialogue and trying to overcome these structural and regulatory challenges. To allow access, it doesn't even it's not a monetary investment. It's also seeing the whole package have now enabled hundreds of thousands of people in in Uganda in the refugee population to actually have access to these services. So looking at the bigger picture, find the keys going forward. There are plenty of these that inspiring samples for everybody who want to jump on board on this on this train. Thank you, Liam. I mean that sounds fantastic really, really on grassroots devils as well. And I mean, I don't know if you want to add something to that poll. I'm looking at that time as well. Maybe I guess just very briefly, just as, as, as a small amount of context from our perspective, I mean, as Elena and Divya Dutchie have pointed out, the, the, I think it's very easy for us to forget the scale and the, the, the importance of what has happened here in terms of the, the, the number of people that are coming online right now. If you were to look at say what has happened between say about 2015 and where we will be in 20-30, you're effectively having, if you take just India as one example, the rural population in India that are coming online using mobile phones, it's more or less the size of most of the European Union that's coming online in the space of a pretty short period of time. So that's a colossal opportunity, especially in some of the more remote areas where that standard bricks and mortar approach to banking just isn't available, you know, or whether or it's very hard to make it work. You know, mobile phones offer a huge opportunity in that respect. And then in terms of what Bibia Judge you were saying about product innovation, it's not just I mean Annapurna has done extraordinary work in this respect and also in term, you know, in terms of you know trying to really come up with tailored solutions. And that's an example of how financial inclusion can achieve that multi dimensional effect. But it's also something that we're seeing mirrored across the various countries where we're invested. We are seeing also, you know, a financial institution, we're seeing microfinance institutions and that speed banks that are based in Tanzania that are based in, that are based in Peru, that are based in Indonesia that are similarly bringing out really branching out from that very standard credit only cookie cutter group lending to really broad variety of products, you know, along the lines of savings insurance and everything else you can think of. And that's only to the benefits of the, of the local communities. So I, I can say that there's a lot of evidence that we see in our in the position that we have looking across a lot of different institutions, a lot of different countries that really see show this trend as well. Yeah, thank you, Paul. Thank you, Paul. I'm looking at a time and looking at the questions. I mean they are mostly in terms of more case studies. So I think that's something we covered and also on the topic of climate, which we've also covered a bit, but I think that that requires another session to actually go into, into, into that topic. But just to end things up, I mean, and I, I don't want to ignore the audience. I mean, if you could answer very briefly, each of you would try to do a sentence, have have policies proven to be effective. Paul, you can start. Well, I would say that one sentence if we're talking on the level of regulation, good regulation can be beneficial and catalysing and can really do a lot to point funding in the right direction. But bad regulation can be just as damaging as badly run banks, Oregon financial services. So quality good regulation is is is an important element. I would say. I don't know if that counts as one sentence. No, Sure. It sounds as good as answers as any really. I mean, it's a hard question to be short on. So Elena or Diprijutsu, do you want to? Yeah, would happen to just quickly. It's quite often we have good policies that are not implemented. So implementation is is really the missing middle here. And also when we were talking about the future and the digitalisation, I think we need to keep up to speed with the changes so that regulation actually allows access to the new innovation that we get. Thank you, that's my two cents. Wonderful. I think the regulation plays a very critical role in any, you know, positive change to bring in. But I also agree that regulators takes a lot of time to bring that change the market reality. So I think, you know, I agree with Helen, you have to really keep up with the change what's happening around otherwise it's going to be difficult. Thank you. All right, I mean, we already overstepped time. So thank you everyone who's who's still on online. And I mean, as we were up today's insightful discussion, I mean, I want to extend my heartful thank you to to the panelists, Elena, Paul and Dibyajyoti. Thank you for sharing your expertise and experience and taking the time also, of course, thank you listeners. I mean, thank everyone who's participated, say your engagement is is so valued for this topic as we continue to explore and advocate on on financial inclusion. And to to end things off, I mean, please feel free to reach out or, or contact us in in through your typical contact details. Follow us on LinkedIn. There's great content there or on YouTube as well. And finally, I would like to wish everyone a wonderful day and let's continue working for towards a world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, thank you, thank you.