But for monetary policy, the framework can also be strengthened to increase its effectiveness in safeguarding price and financial stability. The first is that good macro-surveillance process is a must to help identify key risk that might be developing in the economy. This surveillance needs to cover both developments in the real economy and in the financial markets so that any potential risk to financial stability can be identified early. Second is the need for a disciplined decision-making process that takes into account information from the surveillance process in the deliberation of monetary policy. One key common weakness in the past has been the limited use of information on the financial side in the formulation of monetary policy. Third, in order to deal effectively with both price and financial stability, the thinking now is to focus monetary policy on its core function of maintaining price stability, while financial stability objective is best served by ensuring a robust and efficient financial system through strong bank regulation and effective supervision. Nonetheless, to the extent that developments in the financial sector may have systemic implications, monetary policy can be combined with macroprudential measures aimed at reducing risk to financial stability at the source. An example of this is excessive credit growth in a certain sector that can be discouraged by tightening up the relevant lending standards. A number of SEACEN economies have adopted this approach, especially for housing loans.

For the sample taken, the number of e-wallets rose to 1.3 million active accounts in 2018 from 86,066 in 2014 while the value increased ten-fold in the last five years, to K405.6 million in 2018 from K42.7 million in 2014. It is gratifying here to note that the gap between men and women has been reducing – from 89% male dominance in 2014 to 80% in 2018. Ladies and gentlemen, we can conclude from the above findings that the large gender gap in account ownership between men and women suggest that women inherently face more challenges in accessing formal financial products and services. Further, most financial institutions, especially non-banks have limited or do not have genderfocused product differentiation. This limited differentiation by gender is a missed opportunity for financial institutions considering that women are better savers and are less likely to default on their loans, and therefore good for the financial institutions’ bottom-line. Distinguished guests, financial institutions therefore need to place greater emphasis on segment performance to support individual women and women entrepreneurs who should be assessed as a profitable business proposition, not as part of corporate social responsibility. The market segmentation should go further to also devise age-specific products and services within the sex-differentiated products and services. We must however, take cognizant of the rapid rise in the use of mobile money as holding great potential to accelerate financial inclusion for women and help reduce the gender gap. Financial service providers must therefore, innovate gender-focused digital financial products and services that will bridge the gap.