The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conducted a one day conference on Financial Inclusion at The Le Meridien, New Delhi sponsored by organizations like TCS, Union Bank etc. on 27th August 2015. Mr. Bhuvesh Yadav from Electronics & Computer Engineering Department of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon attended the summit.

CII Summit on Financial Inclusion was held on the first anniversary of the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. It is one of the signature programs of the Government of India. Pradhan Mantri Jana Dhan Yojana or Prime Minister's People Money Scheme (PMJDY) is a National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely Banking Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, Pension in an affordable manner.

Mr. Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance was welcomed by Mr. Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII and the Summit was chaired by Dr. Janmejaya Sinha, Chairman, CII National Committee on Financial Inclusion and Chairman-Asia Pacific, Boston Consulting Group. The other key speakers at the event were:

1. Mr. Arun Tiwari, Chairman, and Managing Director of Union Bank of India.

2. Mr. Hemant Contractor, Chairman of PFRDA

3. Dr. Rajiv Lall, Chairman of IDFC

4. Dr. Alok Pande, Director of PMJDY.Department of Financial Service

5. Mr.Ramesh Iyer, Managing Director of Mahindra Finance Limited

The Summit covered the following main topics:

Mr. Jayant Sinha laid out the vision and goal of the current Government to achieve financial inclusion in India. He said that the vision behind financial inclusion, the approach followed by the Government and ground realities of achieving holistic financial inclusion in India.

Mr. Hemant Contractor highlighted the importance of expanding the coverage of pension in the country. He mentioned that the overall coverage of pension in the country was just around 12 – 13 per cent and there was a need to integrate pensions in the Jan Dhan Yojana to strengthen the social security system of the country. Further, Mr Contractor outlined the differences between the earlier Swavalamban scheme and the Atal Pension Yojana, stating that necessary improvements in the pension scheme have been made in the form of providing guaranteed pensions.

Dr. Alok Pande highlighted a significant hurdle in financial inclusion was that majority of basic bank accounts opened under the financial inclusion campaign were non-operative zero- balance accounts. The PMJDY has been successful in improving deposits of banks and the non-operative zero balance accounts has declined from 79% to 45%.

Dr. Janmejaya Sinha briefed about the last one year financial inclusion has been given a national priority status and is being looked upon as an opportunity rather an obligation. Lauding the efforts of the Government Dr Sinha said “Financial Inclusion has assumed a far more important role with the much needed regulatory push in the form of issuance of new licenses for payment banks and push for financial literacy.”

Mr. Arun Tiwari, commended the government efforts in opening more than 17 crore bank accounts within a year and providing an identity to the people through linking of the Aadhar card and the bank accounts. He also said that financial inclusion is not only a bilateral responsibility of the government and banks but also of the society.

Mr. Ramesh Iyer, shared his views that even as financial inclusion was all about providing credit at an affordable cost to the customers, it can also become a profitable business model with a focus on customer centric approach and right product design. He stressed that there was a need for strengthening the financial literacy among the customers.

Dr. Rajiv Lall, Executive Chairman, IDFC emphasized that to strengthen the financial inclusion agenda on the foundation of PMJDY there was a need to make adequate use of the infrastructure to support the cash in cash out structure, administrative push is required to make optimal use of the Aadhar platform, and policy initiatives are crucial for the success of social security schemes announced as the next phase of PMJDY.

Speakers from the industry presented recommendations on Financial Inclusion Mr. Arun Tiwari, Chairman and Manaing Director, Union Bank of India, Mr. Ajay Srinivasan, Co- Chairman, CII National Committee on Financial Inclusion and CEO-Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group and Ms. Shikha Sharma, Chairman, CII National Committee on Banking and MD & CEO, Axis Bank Limited made presentations on ‘The Next Phase of Jan Dhan Yojana’, ‘Partnership Models for achieving Universal Financial Inclusion’ and ‘Role of Technology in Advancing Financial Inclusion’ respectively.

The conference provided the participants a deep knowledge on the flagship project of Government of India, along with its objectives and developments.