Queen Máxima to attend World Economic Forum in Davos

From the evening of Monday 20 January to Thursday 23 January Her Majesty Queen Máxima will attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos – which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year – in her capacity as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA).

Queen Máxima’s programme in Davos will include several plenary sessions, as well as bilateral talks with government representatives of various countries and officials from central banks, including those of Ethiopia, Ghana, Italy, Nigeria and Pakistan. She will also meet with representatives of fintech organisations and the business community to discuss the state of play with regard to improving access to financial services. Worldwide, 1.7 billion people still have no access to basic financial services, such as a current or savings account, insurance policies, loans, pensions or digital payments. This limits their opportunities for economic development.

Queen Máxima will take part in the 2020 TIME 100 Davos Dinner on Monday evening. The gathering’s theme is Next-Generation World: Shaping the Future, with attendees discussing how their activities can contribute to the development of the next generation of adults.

On Tuesday 21 January Queen Máxima will give a short opening speech at the lunch meeting on Smallholder Finance as Asset Class, hosted by the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH). On the morning of Wednesday 22 January she will open the workshop entitled Financial Inclusion Beyond the Individual: The Role of MSMEs. Digital financial services play an important role in the development potential of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. On Wednesday she will also attend a meeting with the CEO Partnership for Economic Inclusion. This informal partnership of 10 international companies works on projects that make financial services more easily accessible to their clients, whilst at the same time increasing market potential. In January 2018 the CEOs of Ant Financial, AXA, Bharti Airtel, Mastercard, PayPal, PepsiCo, Rabobank, Santander Bank, Telenor and Unilever met for the first in this configuration at the WEF at the invitation of Queen Máxima.

On the morning of Thursday 23 January Queen Máxima will take part in a session of the Stewardship Board of the World Economic Forum System Initiative on Shaping the Future of Financial and Monetary Systems, of which she has been a member since 2016. She will also join a working lunch of the Washington Post and Foreign Policy.

Since 2009 Queen Máxima has been working worldwide in her capacity as the UNSGSA to make financial services available to all, especially low-income groups, women and small and medium-sized enterprises, with the aim of improving their opportunities for economic and social development.