RURAL banking has always been considered a critical sector in the financial service industry. These banks help promote and expand the rural economy and provide essential financial services to rural communities unserved or underserved by commercial banks. The community segment it caters to is primarily those in the retail sector and the unbanked or those unreached by bank services or similar financial institutions.
In its 2019 Financial Inclusion Survey, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) noted about 51.2 million unbanked Filipinos, translating to a whopping 71 percent of the entire adult population. But when the pandemic started, there was a big jump in account ownership due to the digitalization of financial transactions. Leveraging this trend, the report stated that the central bank aims to get at least 70 percent of the adult population to possess bank accounts by 2023.
But the question is, how can technology assist rural banks in ensuring financial inclusion? And what role does it play to help them be more agile and sustainable in today’s world and the future?
In a virtual event, ‘Digitalization in Rural Banking: Strategies for Financial Inclusion in the Midst of the Pandemic and Beyond,’ in March 2022, organized by the Bankers Institute of the Philippines (BaiPhil) and co-presented by SAP SE (NYSE: SAP), Estrellita Ong, director of BaiPhil and chief internal auditor of BDO Unibank Inc., said that rural banks currently face numerous challenges.
To help rural banks and other financial institutions address these challenges, Nitin Vohra, director of S/4HANA Center of Excellence for SAP Asia Pacific and Japan, discussed how technology and business innovation are changing the banking game.
Source : From the Web