Author: Antonio Elcure, associate of the Banking, Finance & Capital Markets Practice Group .
It is a fact more than proven that the access of people and companies to financial services brings benefits, not only to those who use them, but also to the countries, to the extent that phenomena such as evasion, informality and poverty are reduced , and simultaneously, consumption and investment increase, which has a positive impact on economic growth and the well-being of society.
According to the information provided by Banca de las Oportunidades, 86% of adults in Colombia have at least one financial product in Colombia and at least 12.8 million people and around 940,000 companies have loans granted by entities supervised by the Financial Superintendency of Colombia [1] , which allows the development of personal and business initiatives, the creation of opportunities and jobs, and boosts competitiveness in the market, which ultimately translates into economic benefits for users of the market and in a drive for the country's economy to grow in a sustainable way.
In the context of the emergency caused by the pandemic, there has been an increase in the use of digital channels offered by the different participants in the financial sector. According to various analyzes carried out by the Financial Superintendence, this has had to do with the possibilities that technology has offered to develop products that can be administered from the cell phone (without the need to travel), at zero costs, without additional procedures and easy to use. for anyone.
As a consequence of the above, the National Government, through the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, has issued its public policy for the development of the financial system to be developed between 2020 and 2025, aiming, among other fronts, at the promotion of higher levels of inclusion and financial deepening (as will be explained later), without altering the stability and solidity of the sector, and having as a fundamental axis, economic recovery and the reactivation of productive capacity, with a view to improving the levels of income on a sustained basis.
Financial inclusion, understood as access to financial services and products by the population excluded from the system and its deepening corresponds to the use of additional services for people who already have these services, has been a recurring difficulty due to difficult access to rural areas in our country, and against which initiatives have been proposed by the Government such as the creation of banking correspondents (2012) and now the digitization of financial services, which has been shown as a tool capable of facilitating the attention to those segments and territories that are excluded and difficult to access.
With regard to this objective, it is worth noting that so far in 2020, and in order to expand the coverage, access and uses of financial products in the country, Decree 222 was issued, through which the regulations were updated. of the correspondents and free way is given to the operation of digital and mobile schemes in this channel, in the same way decree 1234, which regulated the "regulatory sandbox" or test space, which will allow a detailed knowledge of the new developments, products and channels developed by Fintech and their implications for the market, without losing sight of the regulation and surveillance that the Superintendency must exercise.
It is clear, then, the interest shown by the National Government in the digitization of financial services and products, not only in the face of the current situation that Colombia and the world are going through, but that it has a vocation of permanence and is the object of a greater deepening . By way of example, initiatives and efforts have already been made to modernize low-value payment systems, with a view to obtaining greater benefits derived from digital transactions and payments and the digitization of payments that recurrently and massive the Government carries out by way of subsidies, tax collection, payroll payments of employees and pensioners, seeking the automation of processes in order to guarantee the increase in the financial inclusion indexes, whose regulation will be issued in the near future.
[1] Banca de las Oportunidades, 2019 Financial Inclusion Report, which can be consulted at http://bancadelasoportunidades.gov.co/ .
