Jayshree Venkatesan

Jayshree Venkatesan is director of responsible finance and consumer protection at the Center for Financial Inclusion. She has extensive global expertise in developing customer-centric practices for financial services providers. She has worked for more than a decade the private, nonprofit and academic sectors to expand financial services to low-income and underserved households. Previously, as a consultant for CGAP, she worked on developing customer outcomes frameworks for regulators and financial services providers.

Ms. Venkatesan is an independent director on the Board of Centrum Microcredit Private Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Centrum Group. She was the chief executive officer and founding member of IFMR Mezzanine Finance (now a part of Dvara Trust), where she was involved in structuring the first Indian mezzanine fund that invested in microfinance institutions.

Ms. Venkatesan holds a master's from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a master’s in business administration from MDI, Gurgaon, and a bachelor’s in mathematics from Mumbai University. She is based in Scotland. She is fluent in Hindi, Tamil, and Kannada.

By Jayshree Venkatesan

Blog

Growing Up, Growing Informal: Gender Differences in Financial Services

Teenage men and women in Kenya and South Africa adopt formal savings accounts at similar rates. But when they hit their 20s, men continue to adopt formal services while women begin gravitating toward informal services. Why?
Blog

Analyzing Social Media to Spot Digital Consumer Credit Risks in India

Last year, news reports emerged of aggressive debt collection amid India's digital credit boom. New research shows that early warning signs on social media preceded the reports, highlighting the value of social media for consumer protection.
Blog

Digital Consumer Credit in India – Time to Take a Closer Look

As media reports of abusive lending practices emerge amid India’s digital consumer credit boom, the country can steer digital credit in a more promising direction by ramping up its efforts to listen to consumers and taking the necessary actions.
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3 Lessons for Building Resilience Through Customer Centricity

A COVID-19 initiative to help Albanian smallholders acquire fertilizers, seeds and other agri-inputs using digital payments yields lessons in customer centricity.
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How to Transform Agent Banking with an Agent-Centric Approach

What happens when financial services providers begin thinking of agents as customers? Follow the story of AMK, a microfinance institution in Cambodia, as it embarks on this journey.