Greg Chen

Gregory Chen served as CGAP’s Policy team lead through October 2021. The team helps policy makers adapt to the fast-changing world of digital finance, including developing and executing a strategy to engage multiple countries, regions, and global bodies—and oversight of the work of more than a dozen staff and consultants.

Gregory has 25 years of financial inclusion experience and deep regional experience in South Asia. His work has focused on hands-on start-up pioneer microfinance institutions, digital finance players, and FinTech. He has been part of forging new institutions and regulatory environments to support financial sectors. This includes work with the Aga Khan Development Network, BRAC, Telenor, and Dvara. He also has experience as a corporate banker at Bank of America and led the establishment of the financial services consulting firm Enclude in South Asia.

Gregory is a frequent speaker and lecturer on microfinance and digital finance in academic circles at BRAC University, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Yale, and American University. He has been interviewed by BBC and quoted in the Economist. He has a Master’s degree in International Development from Harvard’s Kennedy School and an undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University.

By Greg Chen

Blog

An Introductory Course to Digital Credit

In the growing field of digital credit, CGAP research has found exciting innovations along with fundamental miscalculations. CGAP's self-directed course, "An Introduction to Digital Credit," presents key lessons for practitioners, regulators and others with an interest in digital credit.
Blog

Instant, Automated, Remote: The Key Attributes of Digital Credit

Three attributes - instant, automated, and remote - underscore the power of digital credit and its ability to scale quickly.
Blog

Smartphones and Mobile Money: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong?

There is a wide consensus that smartphones will change how financial services reach poor people. However, there are three components of conventional wisdom that call for more critical examination.
Research

Promoting Competition in Mobile Payments: The Role of USSD

Unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), a communications service controlled by mobile network operators, is a critical piece of infrastructure used to provide mobile financial services on most phones, at low cost, and without requiring access to the user’s SIM card.
Research

The Potential of Digital Data

The amount of electronic data generated by computerization—digital data—is growing at unprecedented rates. Financial services are an information business—can this growing wealth of data be harnessed to advance financial inclusion?