Pacific Islands Regional Initiative (PIRI) - Alliance for Financial Inclusion

PIRI was created at the 2014 Global Policy Forum (GPF) in Trinidad and Tobago and officially launched the following year in Dili, Timor-Leste, with the vision of making responsible and inclusive financial services accessible to all Pacific Islanders. Key challenges to financial inclusion in the region include geographically dispersed islands, small populations, and limited banking infrastructure.

The initiative invites member institutions to share a common vision while working toward ensuring that financial services are widely available, easily accessed and used responsibly throughout the region. With PIRI, AFI has created a unique model of south-south engagement, that promotes smart policy development through peer learning, exchanges, strategic collaboration, and shared infrastructure development that aims to provide all vulnerable and underserved Pacific Islanders with access to formal and informal financial services.

PIRI has five objectives:

1. Remove policy barriers to improve access;

2. Use technology for financial service provision and access;

3. Empower and protect through financial literacy and education;

4. Collaborate with stakeholders to advance financial inclusion in the region; and

5. Use data for smart policymaking and monitoring.

The Pacific Regional Regulatory Sandbox – A collaborative and controlled virtual policy environment that enables firms to test their innovative financial products, services and business models under the governance and supervision of eight participating financial sector regulators. Submit your applications and get started on this journey with the PIRI sandbox.

Active member
institutions

Countries

Policy changes

Knowledge products

Maya Declaration commitments

Leaders’  Roundtables

PIRI Expert Group for Financial Inclusion Policy (EGFIP) Meetings

Capacity building workshops

Peer advisory programs

Regional Policy Frameworks

Regional De-risking Action Plan

Leaders

Chair

Reserve Bank of Fiji

Co-Chair I

National Reserve Bank of Tonga

Objectives

To support members within the Pacific Islands region and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the following sets out the objectives for PIRI:

Implement policies to improve access, usage, and quality

Utilize innovative and responsible technology for financial service provision and access

Empower and protect through financial literacy and education

Collaborate with stakeholders to advance financial inclusion in the region

Utilizing data for smart policymaking and monitoring

Focus Areas

Provide regulatory guidance led by AFI’s Global Working Groups and originating from peer learning efforts among AFI members from both within and outside the region.

Allow for systematic and focused dialogue with private sector, development partners and other international stakeholders to enhance mutual understanding of the opportunities to deepen digital and financial inclusion, and mitigate emerging risks

Coordinate support activities and offerings from stakeholders amid resource constraints by policymakers and regulators in PIRI.

Create opportunities to systematically build knowledge on technological innovations, proportionate regulations and policies that are relevant for financial inclusion and mitigate the challenges of de-risking.

Enable test-and-learn approaches for FinTech for financial inclusion, such as regulatory sandboxes, innovation hubs or RegLabs, which could also support the application of approaches such as tiered KYC, eKYC (including digital identification) and RegTech.

Undertake capacity building activities for the staff of PIRI central banks, such as practical exposure to FinTech innovations in pioneering countries and training for regulators in collaboration with technical partners on relevant issues such as cybersecurity and anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT).

Governance & Structure

Member Institutions

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