Joep Roest is based in Paris and leads CGAP’s work on Social Protection which seeks to understand how, through financial services, it can enhance the climate resilience and adaptation of recipients.
He was previously based in Singapore where he represented CGAP in East Asia with most of his time being devoted to Myanmar, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and China. During that time, he focused on optimizing Government to Person Payments (G2P) for recipients and studying the opportunity that digital platforms presented for improving the financial lives of the poor.
Before joining CGAP, Joep helped establish Wing mobile money in Cambodia. He later moved to Papua New Guinea to work on UNCDF’s mobile money project spanning the South Pacific. He then spent four years as a member of Queen Máxima’s team at the United Nations, where amongst other things, he coordinated advocacy efforts aimed at enshrining financial inclusion within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).