In the context of modern sanctions and external economic restrictions, Avina's work becomes particularly relevant. She provides practical examples, demonstrating how to ensure the reliability of remittances so that funds reach recipients without delays or losses, even amid global crises. Drawing on her extensive experience, Avina offers solutions that will help maintain the financial well-being of thousands of families in Kyrgyzstan.
— Avina, how would you describe yourself to readers who are hearing about you for the first time? What is your professional specialization?
— I work in auditing, risk management, and the analysis of the reliability of financial processes. My job involves translating complex systems into the language of verifiable questions: where dependencies exist, what decisions are made under exceptions, what confirms resilience, and which indicators truly reflect the quality of the system's functioning. I prefer to assess not by the principle of "how it should be," but "how it looks in practice," relying on evidence. That is why I am drawn to topics where formal correctness does not equate to real resilience.
Photo from personal archive
— Why have you focused on cross-border remittances of individuals?
— This is one of the most vivid examples of how financial services become a socio-economic support. For many families, such remittances are not one-time events, but regular and expected inflows.
When a service becomes widespread, it begins to function as infrastructure rather than just a product.
It was important for me to look at this area professionally: what contributes to reliability, what undermines trust, where the system becomes vulnerable to external factors, and how this can be measured. I view this topic as an expert area, as it intersects risks, technologies, regulatory requirements, and human behavior.
— How did you come to the conclusion that "this is infrastructure, not just a financial flow"?
— I realized that in several countries, transactions between individuals function as a primary payment service: they are regular, large-scale, and predictable. In such conditions, it is no longer an "additional option," but a necessary infrastructure, the reliability of which affects the everyday financial decisions of families.
It becomes infrastructure when people start to perceive remittances not as an event, but as a guaranteed element of their financial reality.
Avina Abytayeva
As an auditor, I assess this in terms of resilience requirements. If a service plays the role of infrastructure, it must meet minimum reliability standards that can be clearly articulated:
- availability under normal and stress conditions;
- clear rules for users;
- manageable dependencies on partners and infrastructure;
- ability to withstand failures and recover with verifiable results.
It is also important to note: if a failure leads to a chain reaction at the household level and trust in formal channels is undermined, it becomes a systemic risk, not just an inconvenience. Therefore, an infrastructural approach helps to professionally discuss this topic using the language of resilience criteria rather than general assessments.
— In your opinion, where do real vulnerabilities most often hide: in technologies, processes, or management?
— I start with the service chain and its dependencies, as this is where real risk is formed. Next, I analyze how rules and technologies function in real situations, not in ideal conditions. Only after that do I assess how the system affects user behavior, as a mass transition to alternative methods often occurs due to opacity and unpredictability. This approach is important: it allows not only for abstract debate but also for systematically identifying the causes of problems and necessary changes.
— What aspects do you consider critically important for assessing remittances as a vital service?
— I would highlight several key areas necessary for a comprehensive professional assessment. First, it is important to check:
- the ability to ensure service continuity under constraints, including the availability of alternative routes and scenarios;
- the manageability of critical dependencies on infrastructure and partners, so that bottlenecks are known and controllable;
- the transparency of conditions and clarity of the final cost for the recipient, to avoid the "surprise" effect;
- the demonstrability of recovery after incidents, including documenting causes and actual results of measures taken.
— Why do you emphasize the connection between resilience and transparency and clarity for users?
— Resilience manifests not in reports, but in user experience. If a person does not understand why conditions have changed, how the final amount was formed, how long the conversion took, or why the operation was delayed, it undermines predictability. And predictability is the foundation of trust. If trust decreases, the system faces secondary risk: users begin to seek alternatives that may be less transparent and harder to control. Therefore, for me, transparency is not just "service quality," but an important element of resilience and risk management.
— How would you formulate your main expert position?
— I believe that cross-border remittances of individuals in some countries should be considered critical infrastructure, which implies assessing their resilience and reliability based on facts. This requires a shift from discussing volumes to verifying real functionality: where dependencies exist, how decisions are made under constraints, how the system recovers, and how clear the rules are for users. In the context of sanction pressure, this becomes not a theoretical question, but a practical task. The sooner the participants in the system adopt this logic, the less unpredictability there will be for households and the greater the trust in formal channels.
