Queen Máxima participates online in 2021 Global Inclusive Growth Summit

Her Majesty Queen Máxima will make an online contribution on Thursday 14 October to the 2021 Global Inclusive Growth Summit organised by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth and the Aspen Institute. As the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA), she will discuss in a prerecorded interview the potential significance of an inclusive financial system for efforts to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Enlarge image Queen Máxima participates in 2021 Global Inclusive Growth Summit
Image: ©Global Inclusive Growth Summit

In 2015 the UN’s member states adopted 17 new goals for 2030 to promote worldwide sustainable development. Seven of these goals, such as no poverty, gender equality and good health and wellbeing, mention financial inclusion as a means of achieving them. Full access to and safe use of financial services form the basis for an inclusive financial system in which everyone has equal opportunities for economic and social development. Queen Máxima will explain this in an interview with Aspen Institute Vice President Ida Rademacher. As UNSGSA, she will also discuss the roles of various private and public parties in establishing an inclusive financial system. 

The interview will also touch on the relationship between financial services and good financial health. In December 2020 Queen Máxima as UNSGSA launched the Financial Health Working Group to develop a vision of this relationship. In mid-September the Working Group presented its findings, along with a definition of financial health. This will help policymakers make financial health quantifiable and develop policy. Several studies have shown that poverty, financial worries and debt have a negative impact on people’s physical and mental health. 

Queen Máxima is also involved in financial health issues in the Netherlands. Since 2010 she has been the honorary chair of the Money Wise platform. In this capacity, she focuses attention on financial education, how to handle money wisely, and financial fitness. She also regularly attends activities of Stichting SchuldenlabNL, a public-private partnership that seeks to prevent debt problems in the Netherlands.