Launch of the "Policy Innovations in Youth Financial Services" Blog Series

As the number of people between the ages of 10 and 24 climbs to over 1.8 billion individuals globally, ensuring economic inclusion and opportunity for youth is fast becoming a policy imperative. With nearly 90% of this population living in developing nations, the youth are particularly exposed to today's harsh economic climate, and are often denied access to basic financial services or opportunities to save, build assets and invest in their futures. There is an inherent policy case for youth savings: asset accumulation and positive financial behaviors among youth will have spill over effects that could lead to great social and economic development, at both the micro and macro levels. However, aside from a few unique examples such as the UK and Singapore, policy interventions or regulations to spur youth savings are rare, especially in developing countries.

In March, YouthSave Initiative partner the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), hosted a global roundtable, "Policy Innovations in Youth Financial Services," where policy makers from eight nations examined the importance of financial services in youth empowerment and discussed the opportunities and challenges to policy levers and innovation.

Over the next few weeks, as a continuation of the roundtable, YouthSave will host a blog series featuring more content and discussion on the role of financial services in youth development stemming from the CGAP roundtable. The blog series will be published here on the YouthSave blog every Monday starting June 10th. Also be sure to follow tweets on the series via the #youthsave hashtag!