Rani Deshpande

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Rani Deshpande’s work with CGAP has focused on meaningful financial inclusion for youth and women, financial services for gig platform workers, and earlier in her career, pro-poor savings and money transfer services. Her consulting work spans applied research and analysis to inform the design of financial services and livelihoods programs for underserved populations, as well as policies conducive to their success.

Rani also has extensive experience in program management, serving as the Director of Save the Children’s $42M portfolio youth and off-farm livelihoods development work in over a dozen countries. Prior to that, she led YouthSave, an initiative that assisted over 150,000 teens to open tailored savings accounts and save over $1.2M. She has also served as a strategy consultant to US nonprofits at The Bridgespan Group, and provided direct technical assistance to MSMEs in India and West Africa.

Rani earned her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and a dual Master’s degree in International Affairs and Business from Columbia University. She is fluent in French and Marathi and speaks intermediate Spanish and basic Hindi.

By Rani Deshpande

Blog

Paying Attention to the Financial Needs of Youth

Despite growing interest in youth financial services as a means to financial inclusion, until recently there has been precious little publicly available information on what youth in developing countries want from financial institutions.
Research

Country-Level Savings Assessment Tool

This Technical Guide explains the areas of analysis covered in a CLSA, the methodology used, and how the CLSA can be tailored to meet the needs of the commissioning agency.
Research

The True Cost of Deposit Mobilization

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) seem to be of two minds about the cost of mobilizing savings. In a recent CGAP study, the majority of institutions interviewed perceived deposits as the cheapest form of funding available, as well as stable, plentiful, and a valuable service to clients.
Research

MFI Capital Structure Decision Making: A Call for Greater Awareness

This Brief summarizes the study's findings and makes recommendations about ways we can work toward optimizing MFI balance sheets.
Research

Safe and Accessible: Bringing Poor Savers Into the Financial System

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, many financial institution managers and policy makers do not believe poor people save money. They tend to assume that poor people are “too poor to save,” that they prefer to consume rather than save excess income, or that when they do save it is only to access a loan.