Spotlight ESG and Sustainable Financing

Financial institutions and large multinational corporations are now closely examining their business and supply chain portfolios in response to this trend. With the world shifting towards a greener focus, the consequences of not having strong ESG credentials are becoming more significant. MSMEs are faced with the risk of being excluded from sustainability-focused capital sources and ESG-conscious markets.

Furthermore, there is a growing demand for reliable and standardised ESG data to encourage sustainable investments and meet the needs of socially responsible investment products.

On 22 June, the Inclusive FinTech Forum will dive deep into the theme ESG and sustainable finance through the following fundamental questions:

How to invest in and develop ESG-based financial products for all income segments
What are the main challenges faced by MSMEs in their ESG journey, and how can FinTech be a force for good to tackle their challenges?
What is the current state of ESG infrastructure in emerging markets, and what role do stakeholders, including investors, issuers, regulators, and data providers play in promoting standardisation and transparency?
How to develop sustainable digital banking strategies

Christian Kajeneri

Fintech Strategy, Products & Services

Mobile Money Rwanda LTD

Christian Kajeneri

Fintech Strategy, Products & Services

Dare Okoudjou

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

MFS Africa

Dare Okoudjou

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Dare Okoudjou is the founder and CEO of MFS Africa, a leading Pan-African fintech company, operating the largest digital payments hub on the continent. MFS Africa connects over 400 million mobile wallets and over 200 million bank accounts in over 35 African countries to each other and to the world, offering unparalleled reach into the growing African digital consumers. The company’s network of networks also includes 200 000 strong agent network in Nigeria, and with GTP, MFS Africa is now the leading pre-paid card processor with over 80 banks and multiple programmes in over 30 African countries. MFS Africa enable domestic and cross-border disbursements and collections across our network of networks and work closely with all our partners across the globe to make borders matter less. MFS Africa was named by the international business magazine, Fast Company as one of Africa’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies.

Prior to founding MFS Africa, Dare worked at MTN Group, where he developed its mobile payment strategy and led its implementation across 21 countries throughout Africa and the Middle East. He began his career as a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Paris. Dare was recently named as one of the Endeavor Entrepreneurs of the Endeavor Network, a leading supporter of high-impact entrepreneurs around the world. He was also selected as one of 13 African founders into the inaugural Foundry Fellowship at MIT. As a fellow he will use his experience and skills to catalyse the next generation of innovation-driven entrepreneurship across the continent. He has an MSc in Telecom Engineering from ENST-Paris and an MBA from INSEAD.

Marina Dimova

Global Director, Financial Industry & Network Advocacy

Women's World Banking

Marina Dimova

Global Director, Financial Industry & Network Advocacy

\As the Global Director of Financial Industry & Network Advocacy at Women's World Banking, Marina leads the efforts to support Network Members and financial services providers across the industry to adopt best practices, share knowhow and take tangible actions to advance women’s financial inclusion. Women’s World Banking’s vision is to build a strong peer-learning community, which not only supports Network Members along their respective journeys to women’s financial inclusion, but also is a strong voice and champion for women’s economic empowerment for the financial industry. Marina also leads Women’s World Banking Fintech Innovation Challenge and engagements and partnerships with the fintech industry. In her previous role as Managing Director, Design and Innovation, she focused on identifying and designing innovative financial solutions for women and girls. Marina is a designer with over 18 years of experience developing, implementing and scaling innovative solutions to social problems. Previously, Marina was a Vice President at ideas42 and Associate Research Director at Ikatu International. She has also worked on agricultural value chains and private sector development at the World Bank, and in finance and healthcare consulting. Marina holds an MPA in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.A. in Economics and Government from Franklin & Marshall College.

Meagan Rabe

Senior Director, Fintech Management

Visa

Meagan Rabe

Senior Director, Fintech Management

Seasoned banking executive with over 15 years Fintech experience, Meagan is a critical leader in the Fintech ecosystem enabling Fintech’s to launch. She has spent most of her career enhancing the ecosystem through equity investments, bin sponsorships, regulatory frameworks and product development. At Visa Meagan’s passion is first and foremost Africa and how we use digital money movement to grow and nurture our continent for a better life for all. Meagan does this through enabling Fintech’s at Visa.

Premier Oiwoh

Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer

Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc.

Premier Oiwoh

Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Premier Oiwoh is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS).

He is a seasoned banking professional with over two and half decades of multi-functional and international experience in Banking.

With a broad, deep knowledge and understanding of Business Process Automation, Digital Financial Services and the Operations/Information Technology sector of Nigerian Banking Industry, Premier provides the strategic direction in various capacities and oversees the execution of the strategic mandate of NIBSS.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree and MBA; a Member of Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria and an alumnus of several prestigious Nigerian and International Executive Business Schools.

[Moderator] Mayada El-Zoghbi

Strategic Advisor, Center for Financial Inclusion

Accion

[Moderator] Mayada El-Zoghbi

Strategic Advisor, Center for Financial Inclusion

Mayada El-Zoghbi is Managing Director at the Center for Financial Inclusion, US. Mayada started her career working with several non-profit organizations establishing inclusive financial institutions in the Palestinian Territories, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. Later in her career, Mayada served as Lead for Strategy, Research & Development for CGAP. In that role, she led strategy development and research on women’s financial inclusion and financial services in crisis environments. Prior to this, she managed CGAP’s work with the donor and investor community based in Paris, France. Mayada founded and managed a development consulting firm (2002-2009). She has also led numerous technical assistance, evaluation, and research assignments and served as a research director for a USAID initiative and lectured at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Aiaze Mitha

Digital Finance & the SDGs, Global Lead

UNDP

Aiaze Mitha

Digital Finance & the SDGs, Global Lead

Aiaze has worked in Inclusive Digital Finance / Fintech in 40+ countries and advised many financial regulators and international organizations. He is currently leading a joint UNDP/UNCDF program on digital finance innovations to accelerate financing for the SDGs. A lot of his work focuses on fintech innovations for SMEs, climate, and nature. Previously, Aiaze led a coalition of digital platforms (wealth management, e-commerce, banks, payments) harnessing AI/tech to enable greener choices for their users. Aiaze was also a Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the SDGs and was leading a global Dialogue platform seeking to align the governance of BigFintechs with the SDGs. Prior to that, Aiaze was Chief Officer at Tiaxa, a digital lending Fintech primarily in Africa but also Latin America and Asia. Aiaze also sits on the Board of several Fintech startups.

Clare Rowley

Head of Business Operations

Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)

Clare Rowley

Head of Business Operations

Clare Rowley is the Head of Business Operations at the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF). Prior to working with GLEIF, Ms. Rowley worked at the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation where she led technology initiatives improving bank resolution programs and contributed to research on subprime mortgages. Ms. Rowley is a CFA® charterholder and holds a MS in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University.

Sopnendu Mohanty

Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore

Chairman of the Board of Directors, Elevandi

Sopnendu Mohanty

Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore

Sopnendu Mohanty, currently the Chief Fintech Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is responsible for creating development strategies, public infrastructure, and policies around technology-driven innovation. Mohanty has over two decades of public and private sector experience in technology, operations, digital Finance, and investment strategies.

Mohanty extensively engages with global technology and financial services ecosystems and has championed notable collaborative public goods like API Exchange (APIX), Singapore Fintech Festival, Payment Rails, Data exchange platforms, and experimental programs like UBIN. In addition, Mohanty advises many international global advisory bodies on Fintech, Innovation and Inclusion. Within five years of his leadership, Singapore has become a leading global Fintech hub producing unicorns and home to many vibrant fintech companies.

[Moderator] Antony Ruddenklau

Partner

KPMG International

[Moderator] Antony Ruddenklau

Partner

Antony Ruddenklau, Partner

• Head of Financial Services Advisory, KPMG Singapore

• Global Head of Fintech, KPMG International

• Global Head of Innovation, Financial Services, KPMG International

I co-lead our Global Fintech practice and advise financial institutions, fintech, hyperscales and investors on strategy, growth and client development. I advise clients globally as diverse as Tencent and HSBC, through to Google, Insight Venture Partners and LSE.” Anton has led or advised on over 200 growth projects across Corporates and Financial Institutions and he has extensive experience of assessment and strategy design for emerging business models including embedded finance, marketplace models, ecommerce platforms, market utilities and joint ventures.

Strategy Development

• Strategy development for Corporate & Institutional businesses including Markets & Transaction Banking, Investment Management and segment strategies across Consumer and SME

• Development of corporate strategic initiatives such as International Mobility, Innovation, Network Coverage, Regulatory Strategy and Strategy Execution

• Post crisis strategy projects covering post COVID and Lehman/ GFC market analysis for global banks, impact assessment of regulatory and market change on business model economics, the design of government and industry initiatives

• Market studies and research for governments, regulators and investors in the areas of financial technology (fintech), innovation and digital industry change

• New business model development and advise on the move to platform-based models (FI & Corporates) Customer Strategy & Execution

• Customer strategy covering dynamic segmentation, proposition design, pricing strategy & planning

• Design, development and leadership of global CX programmes to improve client engagement with banks, including the development of client advisory boards and client scorecards

• Advise to hyperscale technology firms, fintech and FMI on their FS distribution and product strategies

• Multiyear sales transformation for Corporate Financial Institutions, CRM programme development, sales effectiveness reviews and sales training projects across Corporate and Retail businesses

• Business and operating model development for market infrastructure providers covering Sales, Client Service, Product and Business Development – driven by market and regulatory change Digital & Innovation

• Development of strategies for digital, data & analytics across Retail, Wealth, Corporate segments

• Assessment and design of Innovation programmes for global banks, regulators and market infrastructure providers covering Corporate Venture Capital, Venture Building, Sandboxes, Client Outreach and Internal capability development

• Assessment, design and execution of new business models – platforms, marketplaces, utilities and the “Opening Up” of Financial Services • Design and execution of new digital banks, platforms and propositions for B2C, B2B and B2B2C models

• Development and execution of propositions for Liquidity, Supply Chain, Working Capital Management, Lending and Mass Affluent banking

• Cloud transformation - reimagining traditional FS products through cloud services (AI/ ML) and acceleration of data led business models

• Data led business transformation of corporate functions – Risk, Compliance, Finance and FinCrime

• Redefinition of scalable agile business transformation and broader digital/ market culture change Regulation

• Projects covering KYC/ AML, Bribery Act, FATCA, DFA/ Volcker, SEPA, Brexit and the PSD Key FS clients include HSBC, Citi, JP Morgan, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, Santander, ING, Wells Fargo, Westpac, DBS, CCB, Bank of China, American Express, Google, AWS, Microsoft, Ant Financial, Tencent, Facebook, Creditease, Monzo, Clearbank, Revolut, PayPal, SWIFT, FCA, Bank of England, PBOC, Virgin Money, Aviva, BlackRock, FSA Outside of working in financial services, Anton has worked on growth projects with Corporates such as Intel, HP, Uber, PartyGaming, Ford, Mars, Tesco, EMI, WPP and Unilever.