Her Majesty Queen Máxima, in her capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Financial Health (UNSGSA), will be visiting the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 September. She will also be participating in a number of events on financial health that are taking place in the UNGA margins.
On the afternoon of Monday 21 September, Queen Máxima will be attending the ‘50 in 5 Awards’ event organised by the Digital Public Goods Alliance, a UN-supported community of governments and international and multilateral for-profit and non-profit organisations, working for safe, reliable and inclusive digital public infrastructure (DPI). Queen Máxima will introduce the nominees for the ‘Impact Award’ and speak with the winner about how DPI can contribute to financial health. The key is secure access to and efficient use of online bank accounts, savings products, insurance, loans and pensions. This helps people with budgeting money and protects them against financial risks, so that they can invest responsibly and gain trust in their financial future.
On Tuesday 22 September Queen Máxima will be at the opening of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. In the same week, she will present her annual UNSGSA report to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and have bilateral meetings with government representatives and various organisations. On Tuesday she will also have a working lunch with the Group of Friends for Financial Health, an informal partnership of countries co-chaired by Kenya and the Philippines working to promote financial health.
In the afternoon, Queen Máxima will participate in a round-table meeting with Aspen Conexión’s Financial Health Leadership Coalition for the Americas. This coalition of financial institutions and businesses from Latin America and the United States calls on businesses to view financial health as a business priority. Aspen Conexión is a programme of the Aspen Institute, a non-profit organisation that works to tackle global challenges by effecting change through dialogue, leadership and action.
On Wednesday 23 September Queen Máxima will talk with Wall Street Journal CEO, Almar Latour, at Journal House to share her insights on what financial institutions can do to develop products and services that improve financial health. This fireside chat will be available from 28 September as an episode of ‘The WSJ Leadership Institute Presents: Leaders’ podcast.
On Thursday 24 September, Queen Máxima will attend the International Labour Organization (ILO) event ‘The Workplace: A New Frontier for Promoting Financial Health’. She will speak with the president of the International Organisation of Employers, Jacqueline Mugo, about what employers can do to promote financial health among their employees. Employers see the consequences of financial difficulties in the workplace in the form of lower productivity, illness and absence, and there are various ways they can support their employees on this matter. In the Netherlands, more than 55 large employers are members of the Netherlands Financial Health Foundation, of which Queen Máxima is the honorary chair. Queen Máxima will end her visit to New York with a meeting with the UNSGSA Reference Group. The advisory group brings together 11 development organisations, including CGAP, the Gates Foundation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with which she has worked closely since 2009.
In addition to being honorary chair of the Netherlands Financial Health Foundation, Queen Máxima is also honorary chair of the Money Wise Platform for promoting financial health in the Netherlands.
Government Information Service, no. 236