Building The Financial Services and Fintech Ecosystem Foundation in Angola

by Richie SantosdiazAugust 29, 2020

It will be exciting times ahead in Angola as the country is on a pathway to economic diversification and acknowledging that its financial services industry, fintech and wider innovation can help lead the way.

The country’s natural resource wealth and growing population does show a long-term growth potential, despite its current challenges and now coupled with the pandemic of the coronavirus. Before the pandemic, the government has made efforts to boost its wider financial services industry.

The Angolan government is implementing a macroeconomic stabilisation programme focused on strengthening fiscal sustainability, reducing inflation, promoting a more flexible exchange rate regime and improving financial sector stability. Its national development programme includes strengthening financial sector resilience, recapitalising weak banks, and restructuring the largest state-owned bank. It plans to privatise most of the 195 state-owned companies or companies in which the state participates by this year (the coronavirus could of course delay this as with many other aspects of daily life globally). The restructuring and privatisation of state-owned banks will increase competition among the commercial banks. João Lourenço has been the president of Angola since 2017, whom prior to him the president of the country for many years was José Eduardo dos Santos.

The country has also helped aligned its financial services ecosystem with global best practice. It has made noticeable attempts to clamp down on money laundering such as issuing an anti-money laundering compliance code in 2015, which reflects the standards issued by the Basel Committee on banking supervision. Also, Angolan banks are now legally required to submit an annual independently audited report that lays out their actions on implementing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Basel standards.

https://thefintechtimes.com/building-the-financial-services-and-fintech-ecosystem-foundation-in-angola/