The report, Fintech and Sustainable Development - Assessing the Implications, assesses how the financial system’s core functions are likely to be disrupted by financial technology (“fintech”) innovations and how they could help – or hinder – efforts to align financing with sustainable development. It considers ways to:
- Unlock greater financial inclusion by reducing the costs for payments and providing better access to capital domestically and internationally;
- Mobilize domestic savings at a scale that will enable long-term investment directed at the long-term sustainability of the real economy;
- Disrupt the provision of financial protection, risk management, risk transfer and risk diversification for vulnerable and exposed communities, real economy assets and infrastructures, and nature’s ecosystems;
- Collect, analyze and distribute information on the financial system and the real economy for better economic decision-making, regulation and risk management;
- Provide financial markets with the level playing field and market integrity needed for long-term real economy investments aligned with the sustainable development agenda.
The report also presents an innovative analysis of how advances in three digital technologies – blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence (MLAI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) – could lead to revolutionary innovations for building trust, transparency and traceability for financial transactions and make tomorrow’s financial system far more efficient in mobilizing green finance.