The lack of financial education and the use of cashdespite the advances in digitization, are two great challenges that Colombia faces to increase and deepen financial inclusion.
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This is the opinion of Camilo Zea, CEO of the firm Pronus, a Colombian investment bank and structurer specialized in the fintech sector, which has participated in the assembly of more than 20 technology-based companies and has been behind many of the regulated entities that have entered into operation in said market.
Regarding the use of cash, he points out that Colombia (22%) together with Peru (23%) are the countries in the region with the highest use of cash as a percentage of GDP, “which promotes informality, facilitates money laundering and endemic corruption.”
For his part, regarding financial education, Zea highlights that according to the OECD, Colombia ranks 21st out of 23 countries.
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For Colombia, said agency developed a survey in which it found poor financial planning (59% of people have a mattress of one month or less in case of losing their job and only 77% pay their bills on time) and there is also low knowledge reflected in the fact that very few understand the cost or profitability of money over time (10% of Colombians know how to calculate simple interest and 2% compound interest).
For Zea, the worst thing that can happen to financial inclusion is that due to lack of education, people recently included stop being served by financial institutions that they were offered the services in the first instance due to lack of payment discipline or due to poor custody of client information.
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Said “The discouragement and frustration generated by financial inclusion-exclusion should be seen by regulators as a policy objective that promotes education and consumer protection”.
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