Responsible finance is a cornerstone of the World Bank Group’s Universal Financial Access Goals, contributes to the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and is an ongoing priority of the G20 Presidencies and the Global  Partnership  for  Financial  Inclusion (GPFI).

Since 2009, the Responsible Finance Forum (RFF) has been an annual milestone that brings together the private sector, governments, practitioners,  policymakers, academia,  and  consumers to  share emerging best practices, solutions  and initiatives to scale up financial inclusion globally.

The First Annual Responsible Finance Forum in 2010 was hosted in Berlin by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ/GIZ), and marked its launch among co-founding partners from the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).  The partnership has since expanded its collaboration globally and the Responsible Finance Forum Platform remains dedicated to advancing new evidence, solutions and practices with technology enabling innovation across all sectors to achieve financial inclusion.

Today, Forum Partners are leveraging private sector innovators and investors to address evolving risks in digital financial services.  Our community of practice continues to grow, representing an outreach of 45,000 users on the Platform, along with an Annual Forum delivered in collaboration with Forum Partners and Signatories of the Investor Guidelines.

IFC, together with CDC, DEG/KfW, Goodwell Investments and 50 co-founding Signatories–developed and launched the Investor  Guidelines for Responsible Investing in Digital Financial Services, which now has over 120 Signatories.  The investor community represents more than $171 billion in assets, and are investing at least $3.2 billion in responsible digital inclusion and fintechs across 54 countries.

Towards 2030, the Investor Guidelines aim to manage opportunities as well as risks to digital consumers, such as over-indebtedness, lack of transparency in pricing, weak consumer data protection and consent methods, ineffective customer recourse from fraud or loss of funds, among others.  Find out more about what’s happening and who are the Signatories of the Investor Guidelines.