Myra Valenzuela

Financial Sector Specialist

Myra Valenzuela works in CGAP’s policy and customer teams. She has more than six years of experience in a range of topics related to financial inclusion. She works on the Global Forum project, where she focuses on global standard-setting bodies and the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion. She also provides regional support on digital financial services regulation and supervision in East Asia. She contributes to CGAP’s Customer Protection and Value project, which seeks develop a customer outcomes framework that can be used by regulators and providers to achieve better outcomes for poor customers through digital financial services and to contribute to customer well-being.

Before joining CGAP, she consulted for various international organizations, including the World Bank and the International Labour Organization. Myra has also worked for a rural bank in the Philippines.

Myra holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and an undergraduate degree in International Relations and French from Tufts University. She lives in Manila, Philippines. She speaks Filipino, Italian, and French.

By Myra Valenzuela

Blog

Cloud Computing for Financial Inclusion: Lessons from the Philippines

For the first time, the Philippine central bank has allowed a bank to move its core banking operations to the cloud. Its approach, balancing caution with forward thinking, holds lessons for regulators in other countries.
Research

The Role of Financial Services in Youth Education and Employment

What roles do financial services play in enabling youth education and employment? This Working Paper, written for policy makers and funders, outlines the existing evidence and highlights important questions about how to deliver comprehensive and broad-reaching interventions at scale.
Research

I-SIP Toolkit: Policy Making for an Inclusive Financial System

A how-to guide for financial sector policy makers on successfully managing the interplay among four core objectives – financial inclusion, stability, integrity and consumer protection.
Blog

How SMS Messaging Can Change Financial Behaviors

Pilots with mobile money providers in the Philippines and Paraguay showed that simple SMS messaging can increase mobile wallet transactions.
Research

Juntos Finanzas: A Case Study

This case study describes the Juntos platform, which aims to address the engagement gap between customers and providers. It describes how it works, what it can and cannot do, early results, and issues arising from initial implementations.