Kabir Kumar

Kabir Kumar leads Omidyar Network’s global policy and ecosystem building efforts. He is a former Senior Financial Sector Specialist at CGAP, where he led CGAP’s Digital Finance Plus initiative and coordinated efforts in key markets in South Asia. Kabir helped launch CGAP's program on technology-enabled business models for financial services and worked closely with some of the pioneering implementations in the mobile financial services space.

Kabir has been an adviser to banks, mobile network operators, technology companies, and investors in over 15 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. His work has been quoted in numerous media outlets including CNN, The Banker, Economist, and NPR. He has a dual master's degree in public administration and international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.

By Kabir Kumar

Research

Can Digital Footprints Lead to Greater Financial Inclusion?

This Brief highlights some early experience on the potential of digital footprints from mobile phone use.
Blog

Are Retailers Better Positioned to Offer Financial Services?

In our first post in this series on the role of consumer goods retailers in financial inclusion, we discussed how retailers are similar to MNOs in their ability to reach unbanked customers. However, the opportunity for financial inclusion via organized retail, while significant, is not present in every country and not necessarily for every type of retailer.
Blog

The Role of Organized Retailers in Financial Inclusion

We have previously discussed on this blog how consumer goods retailers can be part of the financial inclusion landscape. Today, we start to expand on that theme, explaining briefly why retailers are an exciting opportunity for financial inclusion but how that opportunity is not present in every market and, where it is present, how certain types of retailers could place themselves better to serve low-income consumers.
Blog

Meanwhile in Brazil...Are We There Yet?

The job of financial inclusion in Brazil is arguably done. Brazil’s banks have made it a global leader in branchless banking. The underlying retail payment infrastructure is in place. There are agent locations in almost every municipality. New agent management companies from around the world regularly visit more than 30 of their counterparts in Brazil to understand how the business works. And Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program, already successful in moving beyond G2P payments to credit and savings, is considered a global flagship. We start here by presenting our learnings from Brazil and share our summary note on the industry.
Blog

Head of Brazil’s Central Bank Financial Inclusion Team Speaks to CGAP

We recently spoke with Elvira Cruvinel, head of a new Brazilian Central Bank team coordinating financial inclusion efforts. Only a handful of countries globally have created such financial inclusion teams at central banks. Elvira is part of this small pioneering group of leaders looking to effect major changes to the financial access landscape.

1. What is the Brazilian Central Bank’s vision of financial inclusion?