78 Over one billion people around the world are unbanked, according to the World Bank Group’s Financial Inclusion Overview. That’s one-eighth of the global population. For these individuals, financial inclusion is more than just access to banking – the World Bank identifies it as a “catalyst” for seven of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as it “fosters economic growth and employment, economic empowerment of women and contributes to eliminating poverty”. Accelerating equality was a key takeaway from the group’s 2024 annual meeting. As financial institutions work to expand access to their services, technology – particularly AI – is emerging as a powerful tool to drive inclusion and support responsible growth. “Financial inclusion is an important part of every institution’s strategy,” says Peter Hazou, director of business development for worldwide financial services at Microsoft. “It can open doors to new and underserved markets. Across banking, capital markets and insurance there are opportunities to expand existing products and solutions to new, traditionally marginalised groups. This represents a sustainable opening for firms while expanding economic opportunity equitably.” A mortgage lender, for example, could translate its forms into other languages to increase accessibility for marginalised groups and use a multi-language chatbot to provide them with support throughout the process. “For a long time, we’ve had AI tooling in the form of machine learning, which is good at dealing with quantitative information, but enabling financial literacy is a conversation and happens in the qualitative realm,” says Hazou. “With natural Microsoft’s Matthew Sekol and Peter Hazou explain how Microsoft Azure, AI and data lakehouses are helping banks, capital markets and insurance firms achieve financial inclusion and other ESG goals BY ALICE CHAMBERS FEATURE starts with data Real change “ The starting point for change is the data, yet we can’t be so mired in it that we don’t act” MATTHEW SEKOL, MICROSOFT
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