Kate McKee

Kate McKee formerly led CGAP’s initiative on responsible digital finance, which seeks to ensure transparency and safety for customers through forward-thinking industry standards and proportional regulation. She also led policy and advisory work on consumer protection, as well as Graduating the Poor into Sustainable Livelihoods initiative, which promotes scaling up of a holistic model that has achieved rigorously-documented gains in income, consumption, assets, and other aspects of well-being for participating extreme poor households in multiple countries around the world.

Following assignments with the Ford Foundation in West Africa and New York, Kate worked for 12 years in delivery of innovative financial services in the United States, including leading the team that started up a new federal initiative to finance Community Development Financial Institutions. She then headed up the Microenterprise Development office at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Kate is a development economist (MPIA Princeton University). 

By Kate McKee

Research

Applying Behavioral Insights in Consumer Protection Policy

This Focus Note presents emerging evidence on behavioral biases relevant to financial consumer protection, their consequences, and how market conduct regulation and other measures might best reduce abuse and produce better services for consumers.
Blog

Do Mobile Money Clients Need More Protection?

On this year’s World Consumer Rights Day, Consumers International has chosen a timely target: mobile phones. We take a look at some critical questions that must be asked to ensure the poor are being adequately protected.
Blog

Is it Reasonable to Expect DFIs to Build Markets?

Beyond investing in individual MFIs, how can DFIs facilitate broader development of pro-poor financial service markets?
Blog

FI2020: Scarcity, Tunneling and Financial Inclusion

The pressure and distraction of living in scarcity - constantly having too little and constantly worrying about making day-to-day ends meet - ultimately affects poor people's decision-making abilities. Evidence suggests that this "scarcity" framework has serious implications for financial inclusion, especially regarding the uptake of new products and services.
Blog

Over-indebtedness: Striking the Right Policy Balance

Debt stress is an inherent phase in the evolution of credit markets and in credit cycles, but it is also a significant source of instability.