National Observatory on the Financial Inclusion of Migrants

Founded in 2011 with the collaboration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and ABI (The Italian Banking Association), the Observatory is meant to provide a tool for the constant and comprehensive analysis and monitoring of the migrants' financial inclusion in our country, a necessary condition to attaining an economical citizenship, thus supporting and accelerating the integration process.

The Observatory ensures, on one hand that operators and institutions may have access to knowledge acquisition and interaction tools in order to identify and define integrated strategies, and on the other that migrants access orienting and educational tools for bolstering and broadening the financial inclusion process.

First experience in Europe, the Observatory avails of the collaboration of the main stakeholders: the Bank of Italy, ABI (the Italian Banking Association), BancoPosta, ANIA (Italian National Association of Insurance Companies), Assofin (Italian Association of Mortgage and Consumer Credit), CRIF, Unioncamere (the Italian Union of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Handicrafts, and Agriculture) and the Ministries of Interior, Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Labour and Social Policies, Economy and Finance.

The Observatory’s activities strive to provide an integrated system of information (quantitative and qualitative) and tools for operators, policy makers and migrants by developing and making interlinked dimensions interact:

• A constant monitoring of the phenomenon through five study areas: offer, demand, entrepreneurship, European good practices and remittances;
• The creation of a permanent table for the interaction between operators and policy makers in the shape of a Group of Experts;
• the definition of information and educational tools;
• The promotion of a constant debate with the migrants’ communities and the creation of spaces for the interaction and experimentation of new initiatives and policies at a territorial level (Territorial Laboratories);
• The realization of programmes and tools for financial education and of activities of distribution and information in order to promote a financial inclusion culture.