For countless countries in the emerging markets, remittances are a boon to the economy. In some cases, they are a lifeline.
For that reason, the United Nations included in its Sustainable Development Goals – a set of aspirational targets to meet by 2030 – the reduction of transaction costs on migrant remittances. The UN wants them to cost less than 3%, and for remittance corridors with costs higher than 5% to disappear altogether.
The looming crisis in correspondent banking could crush those ambitions.
Development activists have noted with growing alarm that many large western banks have cut ties with money transfer companies in some of the poorest parts of the world, on the often unfounded assumption those firms may fall foul of money-laundering and terrorism-finance rules.
There is a glaring irony in having big banks, charged with everything from laundering money for Mexican drug cartels to dealing with state sponsors of terrorism, accuse these small companies of being perilous business partners.
More importantly, money-transfer companies depend on these banking ties. Without them, they risk losing the ability to conduct international transfers, reducing the number of transfer firms in business and driving up the cost of individual transfers.