The Cen­tral Bank of T&T has be­come the 100th mem­ber in­sti­tu­tion to join the Al­liance for Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion (AFI).The AFI was found­ed in 2008 as a Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion-fund­ed project to ad­vance the de­vel­op­ment of fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion poli­cies in de­vel­op­ing and emerg­ing coun­tries. Five years lat­er, AFI is the world's largest knowl­edge net­work of cen­tral banks and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion pol­i­cy­mak­ers in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank Jwala Ram­bar­ran said: "The in­sti­tu­tions that com­prise the AFI Net­work have pi­o­neered some of the most in­no­v­a­tive pol­i­cy ap­proach­es to ex­tend­ing the fi­nan­cial sys­tem to the un­banked while bal­anc­ing safe­ty and sta­bil­i­ty. We are heart­ened to be­come a part of that tra­di­tion, as well as rep­re­sent the AFI Net­work as its 100th mem­ber."

The ad­di­tion of the Cen­tral Bank as an AFI mem­ber is a tes­ta­ment to the bank's com­mit­ment to the pro­mo­tion of in­clu­sive fi­nan­cial poli­cies. In May 2003, the Cen­tral Bank es­tab­lished the first and on­ly fi­nan­cial ser­vices om­buds­man scheme in the Caribbean to fa­cil­i­tate the res­o­lu­tion of com­plaints from in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es with re­spect to bank­ing and in­sur­ance ser­vices.

In 2007, the bank launched the Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Pro­gram (NFLP) to give cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go the knowl­edge and skills to un­der­stand the risks and re­wards of us­ing fi­nan­cial prod­ucts and ser­vices.

For the bank and in­deed the coun­try, the ac­cep­tance of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T as a mem­ber of the AFI is of strate­gic im­por­tance and has the po­ten­tial to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the qual­i­ty of life of our cit­i­zens. The Of­fice of the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Om­buds­man is seek­ing to up­grade the ex­ist­ing regime of fi­nan­cial con­sumer pro­tec­tion. The NFLP will be con­duct­ing a fol­low-up na­tion­al fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy sur­vey to in­form its fu­ture di­rec­tion and in­ter­ven­tions.