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

Waiting in Line…Where’s My Agent? Headlines and Highlights

I’m blogging from Dakar, Senegal where I had a stark reminder of why innovation in financial services is so necessary.
Blog

Branchless Banking Headlines & Highlights: Updates from Africa and Beyond

Summer is now officially over here in Washington and the busy fall season is off to a quick start. If you are just getting back into high gear, maybe this is a good time for us to recap some of the things we’ve been discussing on the blog over the last couple months, some of the latest news that’s caught our attention, and some things to keep your eye on in the coming weeks.

Research

An Overview of the G2P Payments Sector in India

CGAP has an ongoing focus on branchless banking in India and on G2P globally. This document is a useful overview that provides a structured framework for thinking about the complexity of G2P across various actors.
Blog

Financial Inclusion in the U.S.:Spending Time In Our Own Backyard

As we look globally for innovative business models and technologies, it’s a shame how little we (as two Americans) focus on our backyard in the U.S. Despite our comfort drawing similarities and lessons across markets as different as Brazil, India, and Kenya, we seem to assume that the U.S., with its technology and banking infrastructure, relative wealth, and uniquely complex regulatory context, is truly different. To test this and see what we might uncover “locally,” we attended the 6th Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum in June to learn more about the state of the art in the domestic financial inclusion world and look for ways where global and local conversations overlap and can be integrated.
Blog

So Where Are We in the Link Between G2P and Financial Services?

The link to financial inclusion is one that can often get forgotten in the quest for payment efficiency.