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Dutch Queen Maxima in the Philippines as UN’s financial inclusion envoy
About 40% percent of Filipinos do not have access to financial services—a grim statistic even though progress has been made in the last few years.
This is precisely why Queen Maxima of the Netherlands returned to the Philippines to meet with public and private sector leaders to promote key initiatives on financial inclusion.
Maxima—who graduated with a degree in economics in Argentina before marrying now-King Willem-Alexander—has been the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate (UNSGSA) for Inclusive Finance for Development since 2009.
She first visited the country in 2015. At the time, she said, "We started talking about the importance of financial inclusion growing from microcredit."
She said that "all types of people" must have access to financial services. "Not only the credit part but also savings, insurance, payments. Back then it was around 17 percent of the population had access to some kind of financial services. And now we are going around 56 percent,” she said.
Despite the progress, there is still a lot of work to be done to advance financial inclusion in the country.
“There’s a reason why I’m back here, is because of course there’s still a good 40 percent of the population that actually do not have access and that is clearly the people who are more far away, the farmers, also women. So we need to do a lot more work on that side,” Queen Maxima said.
Despite a substantial increase in Filipinos owning bank accounts—from 26.6% in 2011 to 51.4% in 2021—an estimated 37.6 million still lack access to financial services, especially women and the poor.
According to Maxima, this gap slows economic progress, leaving many out of the financial system, and addressing these issues is vital for the country’s economic health and development.
Making a field visit to Rizal province, the Queen arrived at Binangonan Port, where she was welcomed by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, Governor Nina Ynares, and Representative Jack Duavit.
She then traveled to Talim Island by boat and visited a microfinance-oriented rural bank with a focus on serving women and rural communities providing a wide range of financial services including payments, savings, credit, and insurance.
She also spoke with some fishermen working on fish cages in Laguna de Bay.
“They were explaining to me how important not only the credit has been for them because it actually allowed them to grow and to invest even more and expand their income. But very importantly, they were telling me about five types of insurance they were actually having. One of them was hospitalization insurance because one of the biggest worries for most of Filipinos is medical expenses,” she said.
The Philippines is highly vulnerable to climate change and access to financial inclusion, particularly insurance, can be a game-changer for our farmers and fisherfolk.
“You very well know, the Philippines is a country that has a lot of storms and is very prone to climate change shocks. So we really need to develop the resilience of farmers and actually people alike, to be able to, if there’s actually something that they can actually get up again with the payment of an insurance. It’s not easy but we need to start developing it,” Maxima said.
In Cainta, Queen Maxima visited a sari-sari store and its expansion store with the help of GrowSari, a pioneering tech-enabled business-to-business platform.
Her last stop was a meeting with some of the officers of the e-wallet platform GCash and the Ayala Group in their office at Bonifacio Global City in Taguig. — BM, GMA Integrated News
