I. INTRODUCTION and SUMMARY 4

2. Implementation of the WSBI Universal Financial Access (UFA) 2020 Commitment and the Marrakech workplan

1. 
   Stock-taking, data and diagnostics
   

As regards stock-taking on the more ambitious financial inclusion objective contained in the Marrakech declaration, it is proposed to learn from the experience of monitoring and evaluating progress on the achievement of the UFA 2020 commitment and to propose some relevant and viable financial inclusion indicators which WSBI members can include in their databases over time, so that they can track and measure the impact of their financial inclusion activities in an evidence based approach. The ultimate objective is to capture a positioning that differentiates members from other market players to allow WSBI to represent interests and influence policy makers appropriately.

2. 
   Strategy building or revision
   

The priority during 2016 will therefore be to promote and disseminate the concepts and lessons learnt from this programme to stimulate debate amongst members by means of the working papers and a series of case studies that are currently under development as well as the organisation of exchanges.

WSBI will raise awareness on the Commitment it has made to the 100 Million Microcredit Summit Campaign and encourage its members in the regions to become actively involved in implementation activities. The overall objective is to help 100 million of the poorest families throughout the world to lift themselves out of severe poverty thanks to microfinance. Communication on this activity will also be a good means of raising the visibility of WSBI with policy makers, standard setters and other stakeholders involved in the Financial Inclusion agenda.

WSBI – ESBG will also need to submit a Commitment of Engagement with the UN Global Compact. As a minimum this needs to include

• 
  A statement by the chief executive or equivalent expressing continued support for the UN Global Compact and renewing the participant’s ongoing commitment to the initiative
  
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  A description of the practical actions that the organization has taken to support the UN Global Compact principles and to engage with the initiative.
  
• 
  Measurement of outcomes
  

3. 
   Targets and objectives
   

In this context the World Bank is proposing to work with WSBI members to reach and monitor countries’ progress towards Universal Financial Access. See Doc 0906/15 for more information on the WSBI numeric commitment.

4. 
   Public sector policies and actions
   

The strategic partnership that WSBI is currently negotiating with the World Bank includes such acitivities as:

• 
  Working jointly to identify critical legal and regulatory reforms needed to facilitate WSBI’s members’ contribution to Universal Financial Access by 2020;
  

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  Working jointly and separately to research and identify financial infrastructure and/or technology best practices to remove operational barriers to access needed by WSBI members;
  

• 
  Sharing knowledge and expertise to reach proportionate regulation for the various actors in the financial inclusion arena
  

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  Working jointly and separately to develop ways to provide advisory services, including technical assistance and capacity building that WSBI can provide to its members to overcome shortcomings at selected WSBI member banks.
  

• 
  Postal financial inclusion: support members in their efforts to achieve an enabling regulatory and operational environment in theor countries, particularly in Africa
  

5. 
   Private sector actions – direct support to WSBI members
   

WSBI will continue to participate in selected international programmes by responding to international tenders or by seeking to attract grant funds in order to perform projects in favour of WSBI members. In this connection, two initiatives are currently being pursued: i) a strategic partnership with the World Bank Group (see WSBI Board agenda item 5.2 / WSBI General Assembly item 8); and ii) negotiations are ongoing with MasterCard Foundation to potentially develop a financial inclusion programme for sub-Saharan Africa members. WSBI is also pleased to enter into direct agreements with interested members, which is usually faster and less bureaucratic than working through the international agencies.

WSBI will continue to increase its visibility and that of its members in prestigious international conferences and WSBI communications by showcasing best practice examples in such areas as providing access to finance for private individuals and SMEs and their activities in the area of financial education and literacy, responsible business.

3. Implementation of the WSBI-ESBG Transformation Plan

3.1. Membership

The main channel for membership acquisition in 2016 will be the member-to-member methodology by engaging-existing members to facilitate the introduction of WSBI to new members.

• 
  African region
  

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  UFA 2020 Goals: African members numeric commitment projected in 2015 will be monitored and adjusted if necessary. The 2016 activities will include data collection exercises to ensure that WSBI’s numeric commitment is on track.
  

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  WSBI-CFYI’s MOU: Promotion of the Global Money Week, school bank project and research.
  

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  Working Groups: The 22^nd African Regional Group meeting in May 2015 approved the establishment of four working groups with a focus on: Innovation Finance, Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, Rural Finance and Financial Education. These working groups should provide case studies on members ‘experiences and best practices with the objective to be shared and promoted to different stakeholders. The activity plan in 2016 includes webinars and publication of case studies on different platforms such as SME forum, European Microfinance platform, etc.
  

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  World Saving Day celebration: the World Saving Day (WSD) tool kit recently developed by the Joint Office will support WSD activities in 2016.
  

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  Caravan of global visibility: initiated by the president of the region in order to revive existing members and attract new ones. The road show will target a geographical zone per quarter to identify potential opportunities for members’ visibility.
  

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  Other activities specific to geographical region:
  

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  Asia
  

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  Southeast Asia Regional Group: WSBI tested the idea of establishing the sub-regional group of Southeast Asia Region at the CEOs meeting in November 2013 in Bangkok and at the 2014 Asia Regional Group meeting in Hanoi, but the interest from members was low. With the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Economic Community in implementation in 2015, WSBI can try to assess this possibility once again. WSBI is going to explore the possibility of enhancing the business relationship between member banks from the region with the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community.
  

• 
  Given that WSBI Central Asian members hardly ever take part in the annual Regional Group meeting and that the business ties between Central Asian members and Southeast Asian members are loose, WSBI is trying to bundle the Central Asian members with Eastern European members and to assess the feasibility of establishing the Eastern Europe and Central Asian Regional Group on the occasion of 1^st Event in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in Q4 2014. WSBI is establishing connections with banks from Khazakhstan and Kyrgzstan and other banks in the region on the occasion of the abovementioned event and will follow up concerning potential interest in WSBI membership.
  

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  Strengthen the relationship with members: organize comprehensive visits to 2-3 members to establish wide contacts within member institutions and define members’ needs. This is also the opportunity to enlist their support in approaching other potential members in the regions.
  

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  Continue the development of relationships with external stakeholders to identify potential opportunities for members’ visibility and even business opportunities, e.g involvement as a member to the APEC Financial Inclusion working group.
  

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  The 2016 Asia Regional Group meeting is most likely to be held back to back with the 2016 APEC Financial Inclusion Forum in the week of 6th April 2016, hosted by the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, Japan.
  

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  Present the working plan of the Asia Regional Group under the new leadership of Mr Maryono, President Director of P.T. Bank Tabugnan Negara Indonesia and implement it (e.g. how members can further exchange experiences in digital finance, possibility to enchance cooperation between members from ASEAN countries, extend membership in ASEAN countries, etc).
  

• 
  Latin America and Caribbean Regional Group (GRULAC)
  

Committed to promoting the WSBI brand in the Latin America and Caribbean region, GRULAC members have identified two major work streams:

• 
  generating and sharing knowledge, including forums and establishing a working group on innovation for financial inclusion as it relates to digital banking, payments systems, MSMEs, risk management;
  
• 
  advocacy and interest representation as the global voice of retail banking.
  

Ever since the GRULAC started meeting as a steering committee in a series of strategic roundtables in 2013, it has decided on the GRULAC priorities and managed the general course of its activities in line with the WSBI workplan and strategy. Since its inception, the steering committee acknowledged financial inclusion as the transversal theme of all the activities carried out by the member institutions and agreed to give it a centre stage in their regional endeavours.

• 
  WSBI participation in the dedicated financial inclusion panel at FELABAN 2015 annual meetings on 14-17 November 2015 in Miami as foreseen in WSBI 2015 work plan.
  
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  ASBA and IDB as guest speakers at the WSBI World Congress in Washington, D.C.
  
• 
  Sharing with ASBA and CEMLA the benchmarks to measure digitisation which regulators and central banks can use to measure bank digitisation across the region.
  
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  Brainstorming a cooperation towards concluding an agreement with CABEI/BCIE as a follow up to the meetings in June 2015.
  

Finally, membership expansion will be a key component of the GRULAC 2015-2018 Presidency and general work plan, and will focus in the countries where WSBI is not yet present.

3.2 Adjusting the service offer

WSBI will continue its efforts in positioning WSBI as a hub for retail banking and promoting the savings and retail banking model. Some proposed new initiatives include:

Accelerating responses to digitalisation and transformation by WSBI-ESBG members
WSBI-ESBG already recognises the importance of digitalisation and innovation and it is a recurrent underlying theme of all of the exchanges of information and best practice at various levels in the organisation including regional group meetings, workshops and seminars as well as dedicated networks. Further effort will be made in 2016 to make this more hands-on and effective also based on experience of a number of WSBI-ESBG members that are already engaged in transformation programmes to tackle the opportunities of digitalisation and the threat of new entrants.
WSBI-ESBG believes that further insight can be gained, time-to-market spared, and investment optimised should members, in a trusted way, share experience, plans and requirements. Some proposals to put such a plan into effect include a High-Level Steering Group on Innovation, a WSBI-ESBG Online Community platform, continuation of conferences similar to the WSBI-CaixaBank’s “Innovation in Payments” Conference (Barcelona, 13 and 14 April 2015), etc.
WSBI Microfinance Banking Forum
Microfinance banking is inherent to the entire WSBI network as the last decade witnessed the Savings and Retail banks downscaling their operations to better serve the lower end of their respective market.
It is proposed to establish a WSBI Microfinance Banking Forum (WMBF) with the objective to:

• 
  Gather microfinance practitioners and decision makers from all over the world and facilitate debates and knowledge sharing on various issues inherent to microfinance banking.
  

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  Promote qualitative exchanges, cooperation, and capacity building among WSBI members in the microfinance banking area. For instance, bringing together savings banks with expertise in savings mobilization and management and micro finance banks with expertise on credit.
  

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  Develop a joint advocacy message towards regional/international policy makers.
  

• 
  Expand the WSBI network, increase the visibility of the institution and create opportunities for capacity building.
  

The WSBI-ESBG activities to be undertaken in the Microfinance sector in 2016 are outlined below:

TOPICS	ACTIVITIES - 2016
WSBI microfinance banking forum launch	Conference in June WSBI – Brussels Webinar and round table meetings to follow up on the conclusions- Q3 & Q4
Knowledge sharing	Mapping of members’ microfinance banking activities: Q2 Cases studies on successful business model:Q3 & Q4 Ongoing activities on current linkages : E-MPF Action group of digital innovations for financial empowerment Microcredit summit WSBI - ESBG CSR committee
Promotion of WSBI -ESBG members business models:	Ongoing activities on: Identification and dissemination of microfinance sector opportunities Publications on Blog, social media, and WSBI website & online community Proactive participation to Global events relevant to the WMBF such as : EMN annual conference European Microfinance Week EVPA Annual Conference Convergences World Forum Pacific Microfinance Week Africa microfinance week Global Islamic microfinance forum Foromic in LAC
Development of strategic partnership	Ongoing activities targeting: Global Development financial institution such as: Bio-Invest- Incofin - Oiko credit Accion, Microvest, etc…. NGOs: Positive planet, EMN, Capacity building and Research centers :CERM, Boulder institute of Microfinance Frankfurt school of Microfinance, Oxford

The way forward for WSBI in postal financial services
It is proposed to define an action plan for WSBI and its postal financial service members in the current financial service landscape and to evaluate how WSBI can provide more adapted services to members that are organised in different institutional forms and are at different stages of development. This also aims to extend WSBI activities from the realm of institutional reform towards greater involvement in international advocacy on financial inclusion issues, in particular, the facilitation of different partnerships models as well as exchanges of best practice in order to strengthen the capacity of WSBI in being a knowledge hub for postal financial services.
WSBI is also in close in touch with UPU to discuss how to seek resources for capacity building to optimize the use of post offices for financial inclusion.
Postal financial inclusion is topic of priority, however, the future trend of postal financial services e.g. the transformation of postal banks into commercial banks is another area that WSBI should look into.

3.3 Training and Consultancy

Following WSBI/ESBG Board of Directors decisions that Training & Consultancy (T&C) should be considered as a WSBI activity and at least achieve recovery of costs from its activities, the focus during 2015-2016 will be:

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  Build a new brand for the activity under the name: WSBI Retail Banking Advisory Services; this will involve, inter-alia, launching a new website and developing supporting leaflets and other material.
  

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  Ongoing implementation of existing contracts and grant agreements.
  

• 
  Acquisition of new business to support cost recovery in particular once the Grant Agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation expires on 30 November 2015. This is expected to primarily come from:
  

• 
  The cooperation document between WSBI and the World Bank relating to joint actions involving WSBI members to reach Universal Financial Access by 2020 foresees to “collaborate on ways to identify and define technical assistance and training requirements for key selected WBSI members”; further, it states “if additional funding is needed [the parties] will cooperate in identifying and attracting suitable sources of funding and could jointly submit requests and applications”. It is therefore anticipated that this agreement will lead to new assignments in favour of WSBI members.
  
• 
  Attracting grant funds from private foundations, e.g., MasterCard Foundation (where negotiations are already taking place); Caixa Foundation; FSD Africa; and others.
  
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  Winning international tenders in the field of financial inclusion funded mainly by the multilateral and bi-lateral agencies
  
• 
  Promoting capabilities to WSBI members and responding to specific requests;
  
• 
  Upgrading and developing new training initiatives in favour of WSBI members
  
• 
  Bidding for contracts that benefit non-members
  
• 
  Promoting initiatives such as the ‘Sustainable Financial Inclusion’ course, the ‘Mobile Banking as good as Mobile Money’ course, and data analytics capabilities (tools developed to analyse issues relating to account dormancy / partnership with Cignifi relating to propensity models arising from big data analytics).
  
• 
  In implementing strategies aimed at fully covering costs, WSBI Retail Banking Advisory Services will be forced to treat potential assignments that benefit non-member institutions equally to those benefiting WSBI members.
  

• 
  WSBI Retail Banking Advisory Services will support implementation of all relevant actions arising from the WSBI Marrakech Declaration and the cooperation agreement with the World Bank in connection with Universal Financial Access 2020.
  

4. Raise internal standards

4.1 Continue to strengthen all aspects of staff professionalism, internal processes and systems

The ICT infrastructure has been, in a continued effort, further adapted to the most recent technology and user standards. Hereto, investments in new severs and software are necessary on a yearly basis.

Further efforts were made to increase the functionality of the computer network and the applications to give a maximum satisfaction to the users. To improve the communication with our members, a new communication tool called ‘Skype for Business 2015’ (formerly Lync) has been gradually installed. This tools allows an easily set up of skype call as well as online web meetings.

Currently, we are discussing with BT Conferencing to organise the audio integration of the conventional phone lines (landlines or mobile) to the skype for business meetings through the BT MeetMe Collaboration Tool.

Further efforts have been consented to improve our website under SharePoint infrastructure. Our News & Views publication has been integrated as Flipbooks to facilitate and improve the user’s facility. Furthermore, we have focused on the importance to integrate our social media tools into our website. The WSBI-ESBG Twitter Feeds have been integrated on the homepage of the website.

Currently, we are considering an improvement of the Media Room, to facilitate access to the most recent Policy and Member News.

The outreach section, with information specifically target on African, Asian and Latin-American members still requires further work.
Also, the Google Analytics software app has been integrated in our SharePoint infrastructure in order to collect monthly data on the usage of our website. This will allow us to have a better analysis of the audience behaviour on our website and consequently respond to the needs of the visitors of our website.
Currently, we are looking into the development of a responsive design of our website to improve the accessibility of our website on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones.
In a second phase, the migration of the current Extranet and Intranet to this SharePoint infrastructure will be analysed and implemented. At the same time, internal training courses have been started for the Joint Office key users on the new build website.
In the same prospect of developing a centralised and efficient information platform, the Customer Relationship Tool (MS Dynamics CRM 2011) has been integrated, customized and implemented. Currently, we are analysing the need for the further integration of CRM with SharePoint, and the use of CRM Marketing Tool for organising our events and e-mail campaigns. Also the integration of a powerful e-mail campaign software with CRM is about to be implemented. It allows to implement the feedback of an e-mail campaign in CRM and to evaluate in depth the responses.
Further a feasibility study is performed on the setup of an on-line community platform for its members. The idea of this platform is to create a discussion forum for the members and a virtual space to share information and best practices.
On the accounting and organizational level and still linked to the recommendations of the Roland Berger strategic review on the fact that the consultancy activities have to be shifted from ESBG to WSBI, the creation of a new entity for advisory services in the field of savings and socially committed retail banks is studied.
Finally some works and a move of our own staff was performed to increase the rental space that was taken up by one of our current tenants and a new tenant.
Also the request of Trionis, our main tenant, to reduce its office space is treated and the search for new tenants is initiated.

4.2 Continue communications efforts in order to enhance the visibility of WSBI

Even if the traditional printed publications are not forgotten, much efforts have been focussing on the corporate website, from a content point of view as well as on the technical side. While content improvement is an ongoing activity, the technical developments concentrate more on mobile webpages, rss-feeds and on the tracking of the activity on the website so that this information can be integrated in our marketing efforts.

We are focusing also on the integration of social media (Twitter and Linkedin) in the website with a twitter feed on the homepage, share buttons on most of the pages and a regular stream of tweets that have resulted, among others in more than 200 followers.

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