About the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development
Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of the Netherlands
Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima is an active global voice on the importance of inclusive finance for reducing poverty and achieving development goals. Appointed in 2009 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as his Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, Princess Máxima works with governmentleaders,financial regulators andsupervisors,intergovernmental organizations,parliaments, civil society, the private sector and the media to raise awareness and foster action.
As Special Advocate, Princess Máxima plays a leading role promoting best practices and policies that will increase access to finance, advance consumer protection and enhance financial literacy. The Princess advocates access for both individuals and the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are often the engines of growth in local and national economies. She addresses these issues during her trips to countries and in international fora, including the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the G20 and FATF.
Princess Máxima encourages universal access, at a reasonable cost, to a wide range of financial services for everyone needing them, provided by a diversity of sound and sustainable institutions. Such financial services include savings accounts, loans, insurance, payment services, pension plans, remittance facilities that can help people generate income, build assets, manage cash-flow, invest in opportunities and protect themselves from unexpected setbacks. Access to savings is especially important. As Special Advocate and Honorary Chair of the G20 SME Finance Data Working Group, the Princess emphasizes the need to collect high-quality data that will unlock information about use of financial services by individuals, households and SMEs.
Princess Máxima also highlights the need for a common language and approach to micro and SME finance, rather than as separate silos. Financing the whole value chain creates a continuum of access that will help to reduce poverty and generate jobs. She advocates for innovations in products, service delivery and partnerships that will bring financial services to communities once thought unreachable - including many of the more than 70% of the world's poor people who live in rural areas. Strong banking institutions coupled with new technologies like smart cards, ATMs and mobile phones, hold the promise of greatly expanding financial access by dramatically reducing costs for providers and clients alike.
In all this, Princess Máxima believes that financial inclusion is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Financial services can have powerful impact when they are combined with access to basic needs and services such as shelter, medicine, food, and education. Credit and savings, for example, can help poor people obtain water purifiers, improved cooking stoves, solar panels, safer housing, and connections to water systems. Insurance can help with both preventive and emergency health care. This will not only improve their health, but also save money and time - time that can be used to generate income, go to school and pursue other goals in life. Princess Máxima and her husband, His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange, the heir to the Dutch throne and Chair of the UNSG's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB), collaborate on this integrated approach.
Main Partners and Secretariat
An international reference group of five principal partners supports the Special Advocate in her work: the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI). Princess Máxima and the members of the reference group work closely with many national and global partners.
A small secretariat at UNCDF works closely with the secretariat of the Princess to coordina te her UN activities in the field of inclusive finance.
Financial Inclusion in the Netherlands
Princess Máxima also advocates the importance of inclusive finance in her own country. The Princess has served on the Dutch Council on Microfinance since 2006 to support entrepreneurship in the Netherlands. She encourages expansion of both coaching support for starting entrepreneurs as well as credit facilities, which are the mainstays of microfinance in the Netherlands.
Since 2008 Princess Máxima has engaged in advocacy for financial education in the Netherlands, most notably for children and youth. The Princess became Honorary Chair in 2010 of 'CentiQ, Wiser in Money Matters', a national partnership of banks, schools, government, consumers' organizations and research institutions.
Prior UN experience
Drawing on her professional experience in banking and emerging markets, Princess Máxima served as a member of the UN Advisors Group to the 2005 International Year of Microcredit. She traveled widely to see microcredit programs in action. From 2006 to 2009, the Princess served on the UN Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors, which sought to address the broader agenda of financial inclusion. She was a member of the Group's Executive Committee and chaired its Working Group on Advocacy. In 2008, the Princess presented UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with the Group's recommendations. Its key messages were designed to serve as guidelines for legislators, supervisory bodies, development partners and the private sector (see www.uncdf.org/ag/). Important themes included the need to encourage people to save, to strengthen systems of lending, to simplify financial transactions,and to educate consumers about and protect them against financial ris ks.
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