The Road Ahead: Envisioning the Future of Inclusive Finance

Fiw Year

2024

Transcripts:

Summary + Key Insights

The final session of Financial Inclusion Week 2024 emphasizes the importance of community, collaboration, and addressing complex social challenges through inclusive finance.

🌐 Community Building: The diversity of participants showcases a global commitment to financial inclusion, fostering collaboration to tackle shared challenges.

🔍 Longitudinal Measurement: A shift towards measuring impacts over time is vital to understand the true effectiveness of financial services in improving livelihoods.

🌡️ Addressing Climate Risks: Recognizing the interplay between climate change and financial stability is crucial for creating resilient financial systems.

⚖️ Understanding Intersectionality: Acknowledging the unique challenges faced by various demographics leads to more tailored and effective financial solutions.

📊 Customer Journey: Financial services should be designed to support the entire customer experience, not just initial access, ensuring ongoing support and engagement.

📈 Transparency in Practices: Greater transparency in operations and outcomes is necessary to build trust and adapt strategies based on real-world feedback.

🛠️ Local Contexts Matter: Solutions must be context-specific, taking into account the local realities and needs of communities to drive effective financial inclusion.

This session summary was AI-generated using NoteGPT.

As we close FIW 2024, Center for Financial Inclusion’s Jayshree Venkatesan and Accion’s Karthik Venkataraman reflect on the insights and innovations shared throughout the week and consider what’s needed for our industry to reach consumers who continue to be underserved, and ensure that we look beyond just metrics of inclusion to unlocking wider economic opportunities through accessing relevant and responsibly designed and delivered financial services.

Session Speakers

Karthik Venkataraman

Chief Operating Officer, Accion International

Karthik joins Accion International from Bain & Company, where he and the Bain team have partnered with Accion across strategy and a range of other topics since 2015. He was a Partner in Bain’s Social Impact practice, where he focused on economic development and led the ‘Social’ aspect of the firm’s ESG offering. With nearly twenty years of consulting experience globally, Karthik has lived and worked across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East prior to serving as a founding member of Bain’s Washington, DC office. He previously led Bain’s Travel & Leisure Practice and has worked on numerous large-scale global transformation efforts across financial services, retail, higher education and other industries and sectors. He also has experience providing portfolio support to investors through Bain’s Private Equity practice and deep expertise in organizational leadership and DE&I. Finally, and most importantly, Karthik is passionate about culture and teams and held many people-related roles within Bain, including leading Bain’s DE&I transformation; working as a leader in the firm’s Asian-American affinity group; and serving as HR Partner for the firm’s Washington office. Prior to Bain, Karthik worked in technology and HR consulting. Outside of work, Karthik is deeply committed to youth empowerment. He serves on the board of Education for Employment—focusing on job training and placement across the MENA region—and also supports the Dudamel Foundation’s work to transform young people’s lives around the world, via access to music and the arts. Karthik holds a graduate degree from Princeton University and post-graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins SAIS and The Wharton School, where he was a Palmer Scholar. He is the son of Indian immigrants and grew up outside Philadelphia.

Jayshree Venkatesan

Senior Director, Consumer Protection & Strategic Industry Engagement, Center for Financial Inclusion

As Senior Director, Consumer Protection & Strategic Industry Engagement, Jayshree leads the development and execution of the consumer protection research and influence strategy, contributing to CFI’s global portfolio. She also oversees the Responsible Finance Forum’s convening and influence model, building a community dedicated to addressing industry challenges in consumer protection and advancing the responsible finance agenda. With two decades of experience spanning structured finance, innovative business models, consumer research, and policy influence, Jayshree has worked to advance financial inclusion and economic development globally. Before joining CFI, she spent nearly a decade as an independent consultant with institutions like CGAP, the World Bank, JICA, and ITAD, focusing on customer-centric business models and challenges faced by low-income consumers in accessing and using formal financial services. From 2009-2013, she was part of the founding team at IFMR (now Dvara Trust) in India where she led India’s first mezzanine fund for microfinance, which evolved into an alternate investment fund. Jayshree is also a senior policy fellow at the Leir Institute within the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has served as adjunct faculty at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, teaching decision analysis for business. Jayshree is a recipient of the Chevening fellowship for leadership from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK and completed the program at Kings College, London. She earned an MA in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, an MBA from Management Development Institute in Gurgaon, and an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Mumbai University.

Sonja Niederhumer

Graphic Harvester, Graphic Harvest

Sonja holds an international masters degree, with a specialization in facilitation processes in multi-stakeholder systems, and draws on a background of organisational consulting. Sonja has trained extensively in the Grove visual facilitation methodologies. Her graphic harvesting work is underpinned by neuroscience and principles of adult learning to support engagement, long-term memory creation and implementation.

FIW Resources

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Hosted annually by the Center for Financial Inclusion, FIW brings together global leaders to exchange ideas, share research, and offer perspectives to inform the future of inclusive finance.

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