Profile of Amit Arora: Having started his career with a banking start up called ‘ICICI Bank’ in 1996, Amit Arora has worked for about 25 years now across the financial sector spectrum from commercial banking to capital markets to development banking including stints with IndusInd, IDBI & Axis Bank. In the last one decade, as a development banker, Amit has worked as Sr Financial Sector Specialist with German Development Corporation (GIZ) focussing on Rural-Cooperatives , Agriculture Finance and Digital Financial Inclusion models before starting his current role with the World Bank Group since Dec’2015. For about six years now, he is a senior task team member of several projects at World Bank, with focus on Financial Inclusion, Agriculture, Non farm Livelihood and Micro enterprise financing besides Digital Financial Services wherein gender is cross cutting across all of these projects. One of the large on-going project Amit has been working on is, focussing on expansion of banking services for rural poor women by leveraging female BC agents across rural India, in partnership with Rural Development Ministry, GOI.
Amit is also part of the Financial Sector Advisory team at International Finance Corporation (IFC) working on topics such as Credit Infrastructure and Micro Enterprise Financing for women. Passionate about leveraging technology for serving the bottom of the pyramid, Amit uses his spare time for providing pro bono support to social sector players and ecosystem partners who have common interests. Apart from being part of advisory council of BCFI, Amit also serves as an advisory group member of Access Assist’s Inclusive Finance India initiative.
Ram Rastogi
Digital Payments Strategist; Thought Leader in Financial Services, RegTech, Public Policy and Payment and Settlement systems.
Key note Speaker on Real Time Payment Systems Payments, Financial Inclusion and Retail Banking. Mentoring various fintech startups in India and USA.
Banking experience of three decades with State Bank of India (SBI) , as a senior executive driving its Strategy, Business Development, ATMs and Emerging Payment Systems and later as a Head of Product Development with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) since its inception.
Designed and rolled out globally acknowledged channel agnostic, ubiquitous, real time payment services – Immediate Payments Service (IMPS) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) .Created ‘USSD Based Payment platform’, *99# .Part of NPCI core team that designed and launched various payments systems like ubiquitous Bharat QR Code ,NETC -FASTag Mobility Card and India’s own card scheme-RuPay, Aadhaar based Biometric Payment-AePS , and offline products such as NACH, CTS and Bharat Bill Payments System (BBPS).
Worked as a Short Term Consultant (STC) with CGAP– a World Bank Organisation for Digital Inclusion and as a Senior Advisor & Subject Matter Expert- Digital Payments with various Global Management Consultants like BCG & Deloitte. Engaged with various leading global research agencies as their Senior Council Member.
Member of several Digital Financial Inclusion Committees constituted by Indian Government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Played a significant role to assist the Committee on ‘Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low Income Households‘ to draft a vision document for financial deepening in India. Co-authored Consultation paper of TRAI on the review of regulatory framework for the use of USSD for mobile financial services.
You may get hyperlinked my LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramrastogi0708