Wameek Noor

Wameek Noor is a consultant with CGAP's Digital Finance Frontiers Initiative. He has collaborated with banks, mobile network operators, technology companies, and CGAP's strategic partners on a wide range of cutting edge experimentation activities, sharing useful global learning that has helped catalyze the digital finance services eco-system, including conceptualization, design and development of financial products targeting the financially unbanked.

Prior to CGAP, Noor was a consultant to both the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) and the Financial and Private Sector Development (FPD) network of the World Bank. At the World Bank he frequently trained senior public sector regulators and co-authored numerous publications on mobile money, technology-enabled international remittances, and other innovative financial services. At AFI, he played a key role in AFI's strategy for the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) and AFI’s Pacific Islands Working Group, fostering discussions with South Pacific Countries to help them better understand innovative financial products and risk based regulatory approaches.

Before the World Bank, Noor worked with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, where he was extensively involved in using microfinance to spearhead technology-driven development projects through mobile phones, the Internet, and solar technology. He has also worked at the Corporate Executive Board, a strategy consulting firm. Noor is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University with a master of arts degree in economics and international development, and Vassar College, with a bachelor's degree in economics.

By Wameek Noor

Blog

It’s Not Quantity but Quality: Consumer Research from Brazil

CGAP and Bradesco recently partnered with IDEO, the global design consultancy to help develop a payments product that better serves the needs of C,D,E class in Brazil. Insights from low income consumers are often not sufficiently and effectively gleaned before financial products aiming to target them are developed. However, witnessing IDEO's innovative approach to consumer research reminds us that simple yet effective tools can reinforce existing data and provide better insights.
Blog

Why Don’t Low-Income Mexicans Use Formal Savings Products?

To understand why this is the case and to determine if there are ways in which low income Mexicans can be attracted to formal savings and other financial products, CGAP partnered with design firm IDEO.org and one of the largest banks in Mexico Bancomer over the last three months. The purpose was to incubate possible financial products that are financially sustainable for Bancomer but could reach scale and attract the low income Mexican market.