Estelle Lahaye

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Estelle Lahaye leads CGAP’s work to contribute to enhancing practices of impact investors with measuring and managing impact for inclusive finance. She has more than 15 years’ experience in development finance and financial inclusion having previously led CGAP’s work with donors and investors to co-create knowledge, provide guidance, and advocate for effective financial inclusion, and led CGAP’s experimentation and research activities on digital financial services in the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

Before joining CGAP, Estelle worked as a private banker in Luxembourg at Banco Itaú Europa, the international private banking division of Banco Itaú, Brazil.

Estelle has a Master’s degree in Business from San Francisco State University and an undergraduate degree in banking, finance, and insurance from the University of Nancy 2 in France. She is based in Paris and fluent in French and Portuguese.

By Estelle Lahaye

Blog

Leveraging Gender Lens Investments for Women’s Financial Needs

Gender lens investing is gaining momentum among a wide range of investors as an approach to women's empowerment. Here are three ways this approach could accelerate women's financial inclusion.
Blog

How Can Funders Avoid Chasing Data as the Latest Shiny Object?

How can the financial inclusion community get more out of data to achieve sustainable impact? Here are four recommendations.
Research

Designing Data Initiatives to Advance Financial Inclusion

Donors and DFIs are looking for ways to leverage the potential of data to achieve financial inclusion impact. Yet, evidence shows that the availability and quality of data doesn’t automatically translate to impact.
Blog

3 Trends in Women’s Financial Inclusion Funding

Funding for women's financial inclusion is on the rise, but just 10 percent of financial inclusion programs are identified as having a gender component, according to the CGAP Funders Survey.
Research

Engaging with Country Offices to Embed Digital Finance

USAID’s digital financial services (DFS) practice provides support to its country offices to integrate DFS into their program portfolios and strategies. How can this small technical team at headquarters influence a large, decentralized organization to prioritize DFS?