The Maya Declaration

Maya Declaration Logo

The Maya Declaration is a statement of common principles regarding the development of financial inclusion policy made by a group of developing nation regulatory institutions during the Alliance for Financial Inclusion's (AFI) 2011 Global Policy Forum held in Mexico.^[1]

Background

The Maya Declaration is broad in nature, focusing on: creating the right environment; implementing the correct framework; ensuring consumer protection measures are taken and using data to inform and track financial inclusion efforts. This declaration was made through the Alliance for Financial Inclusion network of regulatory institutions and although no vote was taken, the common principles have been implicitly adopted by all of the network's members.

17 of the institutions followed up on the declaration with very specific commitments for their national efforts. Superintendencia de Banca, Seguros y AFP (SBS) del Peru for example, committed to "enact a law regulating the use of electronic money and to increase correspondent cashiers from 30% to 50%". While the Comision Nacional Bancarias y de Valores (CNBV) Mexico committed to having "a banking agent or a banking branch in every municipality by 2014".

The specific nature of these and other commitments under the broad principles of the Maya Declaration have attracted the attention of other international organizations with an interest in financial inclusion including the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), GSMA,^[2] the World Bank, the G20^[3] and Princess Máxima of the Netherlands in her capacity as UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development.^[4]

Riviera Maya Commitments (GPF 2011)

As of October 2013, there are 108 member institutions at AFI, all of which have adopted the Maya Declaration principles.^[5] The first adopters that announced specific Maya Declaration Commitments at the 2011 GPF include the following:^[6]

Cape Town Commitments (GPF 2012)

The 19 institutions which made specific Maya Declaration commitments during 2012 GPF include the following:

• Central Bank of Armenia
• Microcredit Regulatory Authority, Bangladesh
• Ministry of Social Development, Chile
• Ministry of Finance Colombia
• Banque Centrale du Congo
• Banco Central del Ecuador
• Bank of Ghana
• Superintendencia de Bancos de Guatemala
• Bank Indonesia
• Bank Negara Malaysia
• Financial Regulatory Commission of Mongolia
• Central Bank of Mozambique
• Bank of Namibia
• Palestine Monetary Authority
• Banco Central del Paraguay
• Ministry of Economy and Finance Senegal
• Central Bank of Solomon Islands
• Reserve Bank of Vanuatu

Kuala Lumpur Commitments (2013 GPF)

Maya Declaration Commitments at the 2013 GPF brought the number of institutional financial inclusion commitments to 45 overall. Commitments were announced by:

• National Bank of the Republic of Belarus
• Banco Central de Reserva de El Salvador and Superintendencia del Sistema Financiero de El Salvador (Joint Commitment)^[7]
• Banque de la République d'Haïti^[8]
• Central Bank of Liberia
• Bank Al-Maghrib Morocco
• Nepal Rastra Bank
• Superintendencia de Bancos de Panamá
• Bank of Papua New Guinea
• Central Bank of Samoa
• Bank of Sierra Leone
• Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago

Full Text of Maya Declaration

Maya Declaration on Financial Inclusion

We, the Members of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, a network of central banks, supervisors and other financial regulatory authorities met in Riviera Maya, Mexico, 28 to 30 September 2011, on the occasion of the Third AFI Global Policy Forum,

Recognize the critical importance of financial inclusion to empowering and transforming the lives of all our people, especially the poor, its role in improving national and global financial stability and integrity and its essential contribution to strong and inclusive growth in developing and emerging market countries;

Reaffirm the value of peer-to-peer knowledge exchange and learning among financial regulators and policymakers for the design and implementation of innovative financial inclusion policy solutions relevant to the developing world;

Recall our efforts over the last two years to strengthen and expand the AFI network and to identify and explore high-priority areas for financial inclusion policy in the developing world through AFI’s working groups;

Commit as a network of developing and emerging market financial regulators and policymakers to:

a. Putting in place a financial inclusion policy that creates an enabling environment for costeffective access to financial services that makes full use of appropriate innovative technology and substantially lowers the unit cost of financial services;

b. Implementing a sound and proportional regulatory framework that achieves the complementary goals of financial inclusion, financial stability, and financial integrity;

c. Recognizing consumer protection and empowerment as key pillars of financial inclusion efforts to ensure that all people are included in their country’s financial sector;

d. Making evidence-based financial inclusion policy a priority by collecting and analyzing comprehensive data, tracking the changing profile of financial inclusion, and producing comparable indicators in the network.

We remain dedicated to making financial inclusion a reality through concerted domestic and global actions, and actively sharing our knowledge and experience through the AFI network. We commit to delivering concrete financial inclusion outcomes for the developing world to provide sustainable, relevant, cost-effective, and meaningful financial services for the world’s financially unserved populations.

External links

• The Alliance for Financial Inclusion
• Full Text of the Maya Declaration (PDF): English | Spanish | French

References