Staff Directory

Sarah Rotman Parker

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Sarah Parker currently focuses on CGAP's work on inclusive insurance. Specifically, she is leading the work on inclusive insurance advocacy, measurement, and financial health.

Before returning to CGAP in 2024, Sarah spent seven years at the Financial Health Network, leading their financial health measurement work and starting a new inclusive insurance practice. She was a VP of Customer Insights at Swiss Re, the global reinsurance company, where she leveraged human-centered design and customer insights to build innovative insurance products. She has also worked as a management consultant with Guidehouse. While at CGAP for six years over a decade ago, she managed work on mobile banking and digital finance in francophone West Africa and led global research on electronic G2P payments.

Sarah has a Master's degree in international development from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor's degree from Wheaton College.
 

By Sarah Rotman Parker

Blog

How do Low-Income People in Cote d’Ivoire Manage their Money?

A survey of 1,000 low-income people in Côte d'Ivoire revealed interesting patterns around how Ivorians manage and approach money.
Research

Microfinance and Mobile Banking: Blurring the Lines?

This paper addresses options MFIs have to leverage m-banking; experiences of MFIs that have served as agents for m-banking ; benefits for MFIs and their customers; why some MFIs hold off on m-banking; and new innovative microfinance business models.
Blog

What Options do MFIs Have to Leverage M-banking?

There is no evidence that MFIs or their customers are driving the development of m-banking. MFIs that are successfully leveraging m-banking tend to be in countries where an m-banking service is already widely used.
Blog

Mobile Money: Even Data Analytics Has Limitations

While quantitative data analysis is a useful first step in understanding active mobile customers, it is even more insightful when providers actually go and talk with their customers directly.
Blog

Who Should Pay for Banking Infrastructure in G2P Programs?

In 2006, 300 of Colombia's 1,100 municipalities had no access to banks. Now, 99% do. Incentives, while not enough to stimulate investment by private financial institutions in all remote areas, played a significant role in helping to build agent networks througout the country.