Financial Sector Analyst (Technology & Business Model Innovation Team)
CGAP is an independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world's poor. It is supported by over 30 development agencies and private foundations who share a common mission to alleviate poverty. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP provides market intelligence, promotes standards, develops innovative solutions and offers advisory services to governments, microfinance providers, donors, and investors.
Access to financial services is a fundamental tool for improving a family’s well-being and productive capacity. Access to financial services empowers the poor by reducing their vulnerability, and offering them opportunities to improve their lives.
CGAP works toward a world in which poor people are considered valued clients of their country’s financial system. We aim to help build efficient and equitable local financial markets that serve all poor people with convenient and affordable financial services.
About the CGAP Technology Program
CGAP’s Technology Program aims to improve the lives of millions of poor people by informing and advising a range of institutions to expand access to financial services through the innovative application of technology, including mobile phone networks and card-based systems (“branchless banking”). This can dramatically reduce the cost of delivering financial services and provide convenient access to a broad range of affordable financial products to low-income populations, and has done so already in some countries. The program is co-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and CGAP.
Leveraging our expertise, objectivity, access, and role as a public good, the technology and business model innovation program advises and informs a wide range of actors including policy-makers and regulators, technology and telecommunications firms, a wide range of financial institutions, and investors and donors.
The technology and business models innovation program is organized around four streams of work.
1. Learning how branchless banking works for consumers, providers and other parties in the value chain. CGAP conducts cutting-edge research on business models, value proposition for low-income, unbanked customers, and building viable networks of cash-handling agents. Much of this analysis is released first through the technology blog (http://technology.cgap.org/)
2. Work with markets. The team has chosen to focus its work in six markets that have exhibited conditions that can support successful implementations: (a) significance in the global landscape, possessing regional influence and a sizeable unbanked population; (b) an engaged regulator that supports branchless banking; and (c) active implementations and credible business partners with which to work. We expect that this combination of conditions will make it more likely to have successful implementations that reach scale, creating more reference cases from which the industry can learn. The six focus countries are India, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil, Ghana, and South Africa. The team is currently considering adding the West African Economic and Monetary Union to this list. To learn more about the branchless banking opportunities and challenges in the focus countries please read our blog series Branchless Banking Country Notes (http://technology.cgap.org/series/branchless-banking-country-notes/).
3. Policy and Regulators. Help policymakers and regulators develop the enabling environment for branchless banking which is open to innovation from business and safe for consumers and financial system stability. More detail on work in this space is available at (http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.11.1772/).
4. Leveraging large financial flows to the poor. Remittances and government-to-person (G2P) payments provide substantial income to hundreds of millions of poor people worldwide, but they are rarely linked to safe, convenient and affordable financial services for recipients to manage these funds. CGAP advises governments and industry on how to link these flows and services via technology. The opportunity and challenges are described at (http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.11.137601/).
Financial Sector Analyst (Technology & Business Model Innovation Team)
Access to financial services is a fundamental tool for improving a family’s well-being and productive capacity. Access to financial services empowers the poor by reducing their vulnerability, and offering them opportunities to improve their lives.
CGAP works toward a world in which poor people are considered valued clients of their country’s financial system. We aim to help build efficient and equitable local financial markets that serve all poor people with convenient and affordable financial services.
About the CGAP Technology Program
CGAP’s Technology Program aims to improve the lives of millions of poor people by informing and advising a range of institutions to expand access to financial services through the innovative application of technology, including mobile phone networks and card-based systems (“branchless banking”). This can dramatically reduce the cost of delivering financial services and provide convenient access to a broad range of affordable financial products to low-income populations, and has done so already in some countries. The program is co-funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and CGAP.
Leveraging our expertise, objectivity, access, and role as a public good, the technology and business model innovation program advises and informs a wide range of actors including policy-makers and regulators, technology and telecommunications firms, a wide range of financial institutions, and investors and donors.
The technology and business models innovation program is organized around four streams of work.
1. Learning how branchless banking works for consumers, providers and other parties in the value chain. CGAP conducts cutting-edge research on business models, value proposition for low-income, unbanked customers, and building viable networks of cash-handling agents. Much of this analysis is released first through the technology blog (http://technology.cgap.org/)
2. Work with markets. The team has chosen to focus its work in six markets that have exhibited conditions that can support successful implementations: (a) significance in the global landscape, possessing regional influence and a sizeable unbanked population; (b) an engaged regulator that supports branchless banking; and (c) active implementations and credible business partners with which to work. We expect that this combination of conditions will make it more likely to have successful implementations that reach scale, creating more reference cases from which the industry can learn. The six focus countries are India, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil, Ghana, and South Africa. The team is currently considering adding the West African Economic and Monetary Union to this list. To learn more about the branchless banking opportunities and challenges in the focus countries please read our blog series Branchless Banking Country Notes (http://technology.cgap.org/series/branchless-banking-country-notes/).
3. Policy and Regulators. Help policymakers and regulators develop the enabling environment for branchless banking which is open to innovation from business and safe for consumers and financial system stability. More detail on work in this space is available at (http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.11.1772/).
4. Leveraging large financial flows to the poor. Remittances and government-to-person (G2P) payments provide substantial income to hundreds of millions of poor people worldwide, but they are rarely linked to safe, convenient and affordable financial services for recipients to manage these funds. CGAP advises governments and industry on how to link these flows and services via technology. The opportunity and challenges are described at (http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.11.137601/).
Financial Sector Analyst (Technology & Business Model Innovation Team)
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