Max Mattern

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

For over a decade, Max Mattern has sought to improve the lives of the economically and socially excluded through inclusive finance. Max currently leads CGAP’s Financial Services for Inclusive Carbon Markets Project, which explores how financial services can support climate mitigation, adaptation and a just transition by enabling low-income households and communities to participate in and benefit from voluntary carbon markets. Over the years, Max has also led and contributed to CGAP’s efforts to design better digital financial services for smallholder farmers, support innovation in inclusive asset finance, address social norms preventing rural women’s access to financial services, build more inclusive digital public infrastructure, and expand access to essential services such as energy.   

Before joining CGAP, Max worked at the World Bank. In addition to his experience in financial inclusion, his previous roles include consulting and research in rural and agricultural development, nutrition, and food security. His work has spanned countries and continents, with regional concentrations in the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Max holds an M.A. in Development Economics and International Business from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Arizona. He is fluent in French. 

By Max Mattern

Research

Designing Digital Financial Services for Smallholder Families

This publication synthesizes learnings from across Zimbabwe, Senegal, Rwanda, and Cambodia, with the aim of providing financial service providers, donors, and other stakeholders with actionable insights into the ingredients for building successful, smallholder-specific digital financial services.
Blog

Minimize Risk to Drive Smallholder Adoption of DFS

For the world’s smallholder families, risk is an ever-present part of daily life. Minimizing the risk of trying digital financial services was one of the key takeaways from CGAP’s four smallholder-focused human-centered design projects.
Blog

Can HCD Lead to Digital Financial Solutions for Smallholders?

Designing appropriate and affordable financial solutions for smallholder households can be difficult. In collaboration with IDEO.org and Dalberg’s Design Impact Group, CGAP will draw on its experience to apply human-centered design (HCD) to smallholder product design.