Financial inclusion is an important step towards reducing poverty
The company adopted the vision: “Sustainable financial inclusion through technology and innovation” with the aim of adapting to the modern technology in its operation.
The mission is to build a human force to develop living standards of families by providing productive socio-economic opportunities.
The focus on women’s contribution in development activities has heightened globally and nationally with the recognition of women’s productive role in society. Women being the core of the activities of the Company, empowering them is vital for the upward trend. According to World Bank statistics in 2016, women comprised of 51.89% of the total population. Compared to the rest of South Asia, Sri Lankan women are very well-off, enjoying high life expectancy (74 years), nearly universal literacy, and access to economic opportunities, which are nearly unmatched in the rest of the subcontinent.
According to an ADB report “State policy also encourages self-employment as a response to women’s unemployment. Women have been major participants in these programs but have generally enjoyed only minimal economic returns. Income-generating projects to integrate women in development have been marginalized by their isolation from mainstream development and have been under-resourced. Credit and savings projects patterned after the Grameen Bank model by banks and organizations and social mobilization introduced initially by the Change Agents program have given women access to credit without collateral and have strengthened group solidarity and individual self-reliance. However, most self-employment programs lack critical inputs such as access to technology, vocational skills development, management training, and market information, which are necessary for optimal credit utilization.”
This is where the PCCL can step in. Increased access to banking, availability of rule of law and respect of property ownership reduces the size of the informal economy. The objective, therefore, should be to make it super easy for ordinary people to play the game legally. The emergence of Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain can contribute in this enormous quest to reduce poverty at the rural level.
Financial inclusion is an important step towards reducing poverty, as it offers people more freedom to save and spend money how, where and when they like. Unfortunately, for poor people it has become very difficult to open a bank account and/or get a loan to improve their lives or build a business. Either they don’t have the right ID or they don’t have a credit history, which makes it nearly impossible to get access to banking facilities. Blockchain technology is rapidly changing this, something we can already see with Bitcoin. Bitcoin enables everyone with an internet connection to open a wallet and start receiving and sending money, without the need for an ID or a credit history. When Blockchain and crypto currency are used, it offers a wide variety of new products and services for the poor, for a fraction of the costs, which could significantly improve their lives. Examples include microloans, or peer to peer loans, for a fraction of the costs of traditional (payday) loans.
