BGS CFO Invited as Expert Speaker at the Int'l Forum on Remittances

On the 19th of October, Richard Schweger, CFO/COO of BGS Smartcard Systems, held a speech about the impact of technology on financial inclusion in rural and cash dominated mass markets at the Inter-American Development Bank Conference in Washington D.C.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) hosted the 2007 International Forum on Remittances on 18-19 October 2007. The Forum offered an opportunity to explore the links between remittances and banking, technology and microfinance, and discussed ways to integrate development agencies' agendas on remittances.

Remittances are part of the centuries-old pattern of migration from rural to urban areas. Nowadays, remittances represent the human face of globalization, in which millions of people migrate in search of a better life and in order to provide for their loved ones back home. Over the past 20 years, remittances have influenced the economic and social identities of regions worldwide. An excellent example is Latin America, with a flow of remittances totalling US$63 billion in 2006, which, many experts believe, now exceeds the combined total of all Foreign Direct Investment and Overseas Development Assistance to the region.
At a microeconomic level, remittances offer a direct opportunity to improve access to financial services, with a greater pro-poor and rural outreach by linking remittances to products such as savings and loans. Client access and efficient provision of banking products in rural markets,usually fails through missing branch infrastructure in low populated environments due to high transaction and service costs. Thus, adequate technology solutions provide the means to achieve the necessary outreach, functionality and efficiency in areas lacking branch infrastructure.BGS' technology platform "DUET" is uniquely positioned to deal with the main drivers of sustainability: cost reduction, efficiency increase, scalability, versatility and geographical outreach. Connecting Banks with Microfinance Institutions and Remittance Service Providers via the DUET platform will establish the "missing link" that provides urban and rural clients with cost efficient "last-mile" financial services.Affordable software and hardware solutions such as DUET will enable a multitude of institutions to enter the remittance and microfinance market by providing a variety of financial services to the poor and low-income segment of the population at the lowest total cost of ownership.