The Qatar Central Bank (QCB) is encouraging financial institutions to provide financial products and services without minimum balance or charges as part of greater national financial inclusion.

This move comes under the strategic goal of promoting financial inclusion and financial literacy of the second strategic plan for financial sector regulation (2017-22), which was released last month by the HE the QCB Governor Sheikh Abdulla bin Saoud al-Thani.
The second strategic plan has been made by the QCB in collaboration with the Qatar Financial Market Authority and the Qatar Financial Center Regulatory Authority.
In order to encourage financial inclusion, the second strategy, which is an extension of the first strategic plan of 2013-2016, suggested creating a common understanding of financial inclusion for the sector and implementing the national financial inclusion and literacy strategy.
The strategy also sought to facilitate the introduction of digital transactions to ensure faster, safer and efficient provision of financial services as well as benchmark pricing mechanism within the financial sector to support financial inclusion.
On the need to enhance financial literacy, the plan sought to support financial education programme at schools and universities, which create an understanding of financial products and services and create customer friendly web pages on financial literacy on regulators’ websites to promote better understanding.
The financial regulators aimed at increasing engagement with the relevant national stakeholders to promote financial literacy, developing campaigns to raise awareness and education on using non-traditional payment services and increasing public awareness on the importance of cyber-security.
The second strategic plan had already made it clear that it was imperative to develop a cyber-security lab, including a comprehensive database of recent threats and challenges for analyses and suggests appropriate response to incipient threats.
About encouraging corporate social responsibility (CSR), the country’s financial action plan is to encourage regulators to adopt principles and practices that ensure sustainability in their operations as well as encourage listed entities to highlight the CSR initiatives undertaken during the year as part of their annual reports.
Qatar Stock Exchange chief executive Rashid bin Ali al-Mansoori had earlier emphasised the importance of the role played by the bourse in supporting the society and consolidating the CSR practices through the implementation of several initiatives integrating economic, social, educational, sports and health aspects of community development.
The country's new financial regulation strategy is also seeking to establish a deposit protection framework as part of efforts to ensure sound and resilient financial sector.
Earlier launching the second strategy, Sheikh Abdulla had said it would act as a roadmap to guide the QCB in its future endeavours towards building a sound and resilient financial sector.
“In the process, we will continuously learn and adapt to emerging economic developments and challenges, while ensuring that the objective of the strategic plan are always taken on board,” the governor had said.

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