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Grooming Centre joined a coalition of 16 partners including multilateral agencies, credit unions, banks, credit card companies, telecommunications companies and microfinance institutions by making commitments to reach 1 billion adults and achieve the World Bank Group’s Universal Financial Access objectives by 2020. This commitment was endorsed on behalf of the Centre by the Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Godwin Nwabunka.

In the Centre’s commitment statement, the CEO stated:

“Grooming Centre is strongly committed to promoting financial inclusion in Ngeria, expanding its outreach, and positively impacting the lives of its clients, the economically active poor, who remain the focus of its operations. Grooming Centre believes that its collaboration with the World Bank Group under the Universal Financial Access initiative provides a unique opportunity to achieve this mission. The Centre has provided over 4 million loans to the excluded since its inception in 2006, and has set a target of reaching an additional 4 million credit clients by 2020.”

Worldwide, an estimated 2 billion working-age adults have no access to formal financial services delivered by regulated financial systems [Global Findex 2014].

In West Africa, only 35% of adults have a bank savings account that is not fully utilized due to the inefficiency of public banking and payment services (AfDB 2013).

Grooming Centre, in partnership with the World Bank Group (WBG), plans to bring safe access to transaction accounts and electronic instruments that store, send and receive payments for over 2 million unbanked individuals in Nigeria. The Centre’s commitment to the World Bank Universal Financial Access by 2020 initiative aims to the promote the positive experience of refined financial inclusion in Nigeria.

The UFA2020 envisions that adults worldwide — women and men alike — will be able to have access to a transaction account or an electronic instrument to store money, send payments and receive deposits as the basic building block to manage their financial lives.

The UFA2020 initiative is focusing on 25 countries where 73% of all financially excluded people live. These countries include Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, Vietnam, Tanzania, Turkey, and Zambia.

Visit the World Bank Group’s financial inclusion page here

UFA 2020 Progress tracker

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