Yanina Seltzer

Yanina Seltzer is a former Financial Sector Specialist with CGAP's Customer & Provider Solutions Team. At CGAP, she led the technical work of the Customers at the Center Initiative and worked closely with financial service providers to adopt a more customer-centric approach to business.  Since joining CGAP in 2009, Yanina also advanced the Technology and Business Model Innovation Team's policy and business strategy in Brazil and supported branchless banking policy and G20 involvement with the Policy Team.

Yanina specializes in customer experience and in human-centered design for financial inclusion. Her work revolves around listening to customers, understanding their needs, wants and behaviors and translating these into products, services or experiences. Prior to working at CGAP, she worked for Mobile Metrix in Brazil, the Inter-American Development Bank and Nathan Associates. Yanina holds a master’s degree in Development Economics and International Business from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics, Politics and Latin American Studies from Brandeis University.

By Yanina Seltzer

Research

Designing Customer-Centric Branchless Banking Offerings

This Brief explores how human-centered design (HCD) could be applied to branchless banking and its unique challenges.
Blog

Understanding Customers for Financial Innovation in Ghana

The branchless banking market in Ghana is promising but has not gained traction as expected. CGAP and Tigo Cash decided to collaborate in order to better understand what’s preventing Ghanaian customers from actively using mobile money.
Blog

Open Sourcing Product Innovation

In our work through applied product innovation, we are learning that being open about the products that didn’t work can be an important mandate for all providers—as what is discarded by some can be a treasure for others.
Blog

Getting Better Insights To Design Better Financial Products

Today, CGAP is releasing a synthesis deck which highlights our experiences in product innovation and helps providers understand how they can use customer-centric approaches to improve their offerings.
Blog

The Savings Conundrum: Lessons from A Pack of Cards

The simple behavior around a pack of cards gives us an enormous amount of insight about how a financial product can be designed to accommodate a quest for surprise whilst saving.