IGNACIO CARBALLO: RESEARCH ECONOMIST AND DIRECTOR FINTECH ECOSYSTEM & DIGITAL BANKING AT UCA
This year has been a unique opportunity for digital financial inclusion in Latin America. We cannot measure with certainty the magnitude of the impact that Covid has had on the banking industry in the region but, it has certainly been an unprecedented one.
Much of this phenomenon was a consequence of the emergency aid that the States brought to their citizens in a context of mandatory preventive confinement and isolation. The “Coronavaucher” implemented in Brazil, paid through Caixa Tem, the Caixa Econômica Federal App reached 66 million people, of which some 36 million were estimated to be unbanked. That is 17% of the unbanked population in the region according to the World Bank. In Colombia, the Ingreso Solidario program reached 3 million families, 19% of the population, of which 1.5 million were unbanked. In Argentina, the Emergency Family Income is estimated to have reached 3 million unbanked people. Before Covid, it is estimated that 45.6% of the adult population in Latin America was excluded from the financial system. That is, 207 million people did not have access to a savings account. Now, almost 20% of the unbanked population in the region is able to access a savings account, counting only 3 economies from March to August. It is a simply impressive number. These figures mark a before and after for our region, and provide new opportunities and challenges for financial inclusion tools as we know them. Just thinking that more than 40 million people now have access to the financial system and are generating formal data around their financial life implies a very relevant opportunity for alternative data systems. Let’s look at a representative example of many companies.
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