Training opportunities

10- 15
May
Rethinking Financial Inclusion – Smart Design for Policy and Practice
Training opportunity

Sunday, May 10, 2015 to Friday, May 15, 2015

This one week executive education program at Harvard Kennedy School will explore frontier issues in finance for the poor through a ‘smart design’ framework for financial inclusion products and policies. It will combine a data-centered approach to understand the market for finance and client needs with theoretical insights from economics and the behavioral sciences on how to design and test financial products. The curriculum incorporates lectures by Harvard faculty as well as collaborative group work sessions in which participants apply the smart design framework to real-world problems faced by their organizations. The program will enable the participants to:

  • Deepen their understanding of household and small firm needs and behavioral issues related to financial decision-making;
  • Apply the latest evidence to effectively design financial services to meet client needs in low-income settings;
  • Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of financial products;
  • Understand the opportunities and challenges posed by ‘big data’ for both product design and regulation;
  • Balance the objectives and constraints of different actors, including clients, financial institutions, regulators, and donors;
  • Use design principles and economic insights to devise regulatory policies that enhance the benefits of financial access for the poor.

Application deadline: March 10, 2015

Program fee: $7,200

Find out more and register