UNS — Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS) Surakarta inaugurated the youngest professor, Prof. Irwan Trinugroho, M.Sc, Ph.D., as Professor in Financial Management at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) UNS. Prof. Irwan is the 19th professor in FEB and the 245th professor in UNS.
The Chairman of Academic Senate UNS, Prof. Adi Sulistiyono, stated that Prof. Irwan Trinugroho, M.Sc, Ph.D., is the youngest professor in UNS. “He is 37 years old when inaugurated,” Prof. Adi explained.
Prof. Irwan was inaugurated as a professor in an Opening Academic Senate Meeting on Thursday (30/12/2021) with an inauguration speech on Finance, Technology, Inclusion, and (In)equality.
In a press release held in Ruang Sidang 2 dr. Prakosa Building UNS, Prof. Irwan stated that technology would hold an increasingly important role in the financial service industry globally, particularly in the last few decades. Various studies have reported that technology-based financial innovation offered by banks and other financial service institutions has a significant role in improving financial inclusion that will increase economic growth and reduce income inequality as an important part of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
However, Prof. Irwan also discussed the possible dark side of the development, with the increase of illegal fintech that could create predatory lending or online loan sharking. This service offered easy access and loan disbursement at the cost of skyrocketing interest rates, criminal means of debt collection, bullying, to privacy violations of borrowers. Another potential dark side of the development is the tendency of digital financial services providers to promote and target medium to high-income households while leaving the marginalized low-income family.
To promote the positive effect of digital finance and technology development while preventing the potential dark side of the development, Prof. Irwan offered recommendations through service providers and regulators to educate the community comprehensively and continuously on digital finance and the benefits and risks of digital finance. Prof. Irwan also emphasized the efforts taken by the Center for Fintech and Banking UNS through a consistent survey on community trust towards financial service providers.
“We found that trust to fintech is far lower than the trust towards other financial services, especially banks,” Prof. Irwan mentioned. However, he added that after dividing the samples into high and low financial literacy groups, the study found a significant gap in trust level. “This means an improvement on financial literacy could increase people’s trust towards financial services provider,” he concluded.
His second suggestion focused on the development and equal distribution of Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructures in every Indonesian province, the protection of technology usage and policies and regulations such as on the interest rate of fintech lending and distribution of online fintech lending for productive activities by micro and small enterprises with no access to the bank lending. Humas UNS
Reporter: Dwi Hastuti