Sarah Rotman Parker

Sarah Parker is a Director, working on the Center for Financial Services Innovation’s (CFSI’s) public thought-leadership. She manages CFSI’s work on financial health, making this more tangible and actionable for providers in how they serve financial consumers. Having come to CFSI from working on financial inclusion internationally, Sarah is motivated to improve the overall financial health of American consumers. Prior to joining CFSI, Sarah worked at CGAP, managing their mobile banking agenda in francophone West Africa and leading global research on electronic government payments.

By Sarah Rotman Parker

Blog

The Implications of Data Tracking on Financial Inclusion

This debate over internet data tracking has important implications for financial inclusion and in particular new channels like mobile banking that are expanding access to finance to consumers in low-access markets. Some see the end business model for these channels as providing low-cost or free services to consumers, making their profits instead by selling their data to companies looking to offer these consumers tailored products. In this post, we present two different viewpoints from Rafe Mazer, who focuses on financial consumer protection, and Sarah Rotman, who focuses on product innovation.
Blog

Savings and Credit on Mobile: The Jipange KuSave Experiment

The results of an experiment with a lend-to-save model in Kenya, Jipange KuSave, showed that there is demand for financial services which are quite different from those currently offered by mainstream providers.
Research

The Jipange KuSave Experiment in Kenya

This Brief highlights the experience of Jipange KuSave, the mobile version of P9 designed to work over the M-PESA system.
Blog

INOVA: Oasis of Innovation in the West African Desert

INOVA is the first e-money issuer authorized by the central bank in Burkina Faso to offer services of its kind. It is the first company to have a top-notch platform for the Inovapay wallet developed and implemented in the developing world, offering services that are multi-channel, multi-operator, multi-currency, multi-lingual, and multi-institutional.
Blog

Senegal: A Unique Ecosystem of Branchless Banking in West Africa

Ecosystem is a popular word that is increasingly thrown around financial inclusion circles in the last couple years…and for good reason. To provide a range of financial services to various segments of the unbanked population, one provider, one delivery channel and one business model will never be sufficient. As we looked around the conference room at the BCEAO, it was clear that an ecosystem was emerging in Senegal.