Wameek Noor

Wameek Noor is a consultant with CGAP's Digital Finance Frontiers Initiative. He has collaborated with banks, mobile network operators, technology companies, and CGAP's strategic partners on a wide range of cutting edge experimentation activities, sharing useful global learning that has helped catalyze the digital finance services eco-system, including conceptualization, design and development of financial products targeting the financially unbanked.

Prior to CGAP, Noor was a consultant to both the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and the Financial and Private Sector Development (FPD) network of the World Bank. At the World Bank he frequently trained senior public sector regulators and co-authored numerous publications on mobile money, technology-enabled international remittances, and other innovative financial services. At AFI, he played a key role in AFI's strategy for the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) and AFI’s Pacific Islands Working Group, fostering discussions with South Pacific Countries to help them better understand innovative financial products and risk based regulatory approaches.

Before the World Bank, Noor worked with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, where he was extensively involved in using microfinance to spearhead technology-driven development projects through mobile phones, the Internet, and solar technology. He has also worked at the Corporate Executive Board, a strategy consulting firm. Noor is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University with a master of arts degree in economics and international development, and Vassar College, with a bachelor's degree in economics.

By Wameek Noor

Blog

How the Poor Can Benefit from Choice in the Remittance Market

Mounting competition and increasing innovation among money transfer companies are resulting in increased benefits to customers - especially senders of remittances.
Blog

International Remittances and Branchless Banking: Emerging Models

The landscape of international remittances through branchless banking continues to evolve, with a variety of new players and models entering the market and driving change.
Blog

Anti-Money Laundering Regulation and Financial Inclusion

The Financial Action Task Force is making significant strides in providing more granular guidance to country regulators on balancing anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations with financial inclusion goals. This guidance impacts financial service providers in several ways.
Blog

Open Sourcing Product Innovation

In our work through applied product innovation, we are learning that being open about the products that didn’t work can be an important mandate for all providers—as what is discarded by some can be a treasure for others.
Blog

Product Development Doesn’t End with Design

Product development does not and should end with a designed product. The role of creative thinking to circumvent challenges and identify the right opportunities cannot be underestimated if a product is to be successfully designed, launched and most importantly, used by those for which it was intended.