Staff Directory

Maria Fernandez Vidal

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Maria Fernandez Vidal is a Senior Financial Sector Specialist, leading CGAP’s work on Data. Her work is focused on the role data can play in advancing financial inclusion and covers a range of topics including data-driven business models and open finance. She has also worked substantially with fintechs, platforms and advanced analytics. Before joining CGAP, Maria was at McKinsey & Company, working in Latin America & the Caribbean and the US. At McKinsey, she served clients in the financial sector and the public and social sector on a broad range of topics including strategy, risk, operations and organization. Maria previously worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Endeavor.

Maria holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with majors in strategic management and finance, and graduate and undergraduate degrees in economics from the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.

By Maria Fernandez Vidal

Blog

Success in Open Finance Requires Trust – Lessons from Brazil

Brazil's rapid expansion of open finance shows its potential to transform financial services, and recent CGAP research offers valuable insights into Brazil, as well as other markets interested in implementing open finance.
Blog

As More Low-Income People Generate Digital Trails, Women Lag Behind

Women are lagging behind men in digital access and the generation of digital footprints, which can lead to further disadvantages in financial access and usage. We discuss how financial service providers and authorities can address these gaps.
Research

Global Landscape: Data Trails of Digitally Included Poor (DIP) People

Many low-income people generate rich data trails that are not being fully leveraged in the design and delivery of financial services. CGAP's reading deck puts a spotlight on the specific data trails generated by digitally included yet poor people, the sources of these data trails, and variations of data trails across different segmentations.
Blog

How Can Data Sharing Support Inclusion?

Data sharing can unlock a number of opportunities for the financial inclusion of poor individuals in EMDEs. To understand how, we must look at the various models of data sharing and how they may result in an inclusive data ecosystem.
Blog

Data Privacy Concerns Influence Financial Behaviors in India, Kenya

For digital financial services providers looking for a competitive edge in developing economies, better data privacy features could be the answer, according to CGAP research from India and Kenya.