From its founding in 2008 until retiring in 2019, Elisabeth Rhyne was the Managing Director of CFI. As senior vice president of Accion since 2000, Beth led Accion’s initial entry into Africa and India, directed the organization’s research efforts to develop new financial products, and managed Accion’s publications and educational activities.
Recognized as a leading thinker and writer in the field of microfinance, Beth has published numerous articles and four books on the topic, including Mainstreaming Microfinance: How Lending to the Poor Began, Grew and Came of Age in Bolivia (Kumarian Press, 2001). She was also co-editor of The New World of Microenterprise Finance (Kumarian, 1994), which provided the introduction to microfinance for many of the field’s current professionals.
Beth was director of the Office of Microenterprise Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1994 to 1998, where she developed and led USAID’s Microenterprise Initiative. While there, she contributed to the founding of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and the Boulder Institute of Microfinance. Beth’s experience includes eight years of residence in Africa (Kenya and Mozambique) and independent consulting on microfinance policy and operations for governments, international organizations and microfinance institutions.
She holds a master’s and Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history and humanities from Stanford University.
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Former Managing Director

Elisabeth Rhyne

Eric oversaw a portfolio of research projects examining consumer financial behavior and its determinants from 2018 to 2021 and led CFI’s workstream on the role of financial services in helping low-income communities mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Prior to joining CFI, Eric served as research director at Microfinance Opportunities. While there, he led numerous research projects &#8212; including nearly a dozen Financial Diaries studies &#8212; examining financial inclusion and its intersection with energy poverty, labor conditions, and smallholder farmers, among other topics. In addition, Eric analyzed the transaction data of numerous large financial service providers to identify insights that influenced policy, product, and service development. Prior to working in financial inclusion, Eric worked as a high school mathematics teacher.
Eric holds a master’s degree from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and bachelor’s degrees in economics and political science from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Former Senior Research Director

Eric Noggle

With millions of people worldwide receiving G2P payments, the potential for this scheme to serve as an on-ramp for financial inclusion is great. However, as 2016 CFI Fellow <a href="/government-to-person-transfers">Guy Stuart demonstrated</a>, G2P schemes often fall short of this goal, serving largely as mere payment repositories instead of a tool for economic advancement. Larry&#8217;s research will provide insight from the supply-side perspective, looking at the incentives, costs and ability of financial institutions to build an on-ramp that turns G2P recipients into long-term, productive customers.

Larry Reed is a 2019 CFI Research Fellow investigating how G2P (government-to-person) payments can be a more effective on-ramp for financial inclusion.
Larry is the Senior Fellow for Financial Inclusion at RESULTS, a citizen’s advocacy group seeking to bring about legislation and policies that contribute to the elimination of extreme poverty around the world. As an advocate for the expanded use of the Ultra-Poor Graduation Approach, Larry conducts research, writes articles and organizes events to help government leaders learn how to apply this approach to their anti-poverty social welfare programs. Larry also spent 13 years with Opportunity International, including five years as their Africa Regional Director and eight years as the first CEO of the Opportunity International Network.
Larry has authored the Global State of Ultra-Poverty, the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Reports from 2010 to 2016 and has contributed to several books on finance and the poor including “The New World of Microfinance” (Rhyne, Otero, et. al., 1996), “Serving with the Poor in Africa” (Yamamori, Myers, Bediako and Reed, 1996), “Globalization and the Kingdom of God” (Goudzwaard, 2001) and “More Pathways Out of Poverty” (Harris et. al., 2006).
Larry is a graduate of Wheaton College and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He and his wife Sandy have three children and three grandchildren.

Senior Fellow, RESULTS

Larry Reed

Financial institutions of all sizes are finding that fintech partnerships can help them reach underserved customer segments. These partnerships frequently involve the use of APIs to create the necessary connections and data sharing between fintech and financial institution. However, it may be especially challenging for smaller financial institutions to benefit from such connections. For these providers in particular, knowledge of the landscape of APIs, including their costs and benefits, is critical to their ability to remain competitive. Dan’s research will help financial service providers and investors better understand APIs—their types, costs, and benefits—knowledge they need to thrive in a competitive marketplace.

Dan Kleinbaum is a 2019 CFI Research Fellow investigating how fintechs and financial institutions are using APIs to reach underserved customers.
Dan is the Entrepreneur in Residence at <a href="http://www.dfslab.net/">DFS Lab</a>, where he is supporting the next wave of fintech companies and helping build out the global fintech ecosystem. Prior to joining DFS Lab, Dan co-founded and served as the Chief Operating Officer at Beyonic, a payment aggregator offering streamlined APIs and other tools for businesses to connect to mobile money networks throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Entrepreneur in Residence, DFS Lab

Dan Kleinbaum

Listen to the Webinar

Webinar

In this session, we spoke with our incoming CFI Research Fellows, Dan Kleinbaum and Larry Reed, who will be exploring research questions over the coming months that we think are especially important to the financial inclusion space today.
<ul>
<li>How do financial institutions use mass APIs, open APIs, custom APIs and bespoke partnerships to partner effectively with fintechs to reach the underserved?</li>
<li>How can banks and other financial institutions provide a set of accounts and services for G2P recipients in a profitable way?</li>
</ul>

Webinar: Meet the 2019 CFI Research Fellows

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