Who We Are

Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) is an international, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of scalable, sustainable, and inclusive financial innovation and evidence-based regulatory and supervisory innovation.

We work collaboratively with academic institutions and other stakeholders to create knowledge and apply data-driven insights to inform the development of digital financial services and the decision-making of central banks, securities regulators, and other financial authorities.

We generate high-impact, applied outputs, develop digital tools, platforms, and services, and deliver capacity building at scale through technical assistance and training with a focus on benefiting financially excluded, marginalized, and disadvantaged populations globally. 

Our Approach

Underpinned by emerging technologies and enabled by innovation in business models, FinTech and other forms of digital financial services have begun to reshape the landscape of finance globally. From digital payments, digital capital raising, digital lending and digital banking to Insurtech, the digitalisation of financial services is gathering pace, bringing benefits to consumers and SMEs by widening access to finance, enhancing competition, increasing product offering and improving customer experience. At the same time, technology-enabled financial innovation can pose risks and cause considerable harm to end-users if they are not applied safely, developed sustainably, or are not appropriately regulated or supervised.   

Many stakeholders are working in the innovative development finance space to explore effective ways to harness the power of financial innovation to grow digital economy, advance financial inclusion, mitigate risks, minimise harm and increase the capacity of regulators, supervisors, and policymakers to better respond to challenge and seize opportunities. However, these efforts are often hampered by the lack of empirical data and essential knowledge, the lack of digital and transferrable solutions, toolkit and infrastructure, the lack of scalable capacity building and effective coordination among technical assistance providers.

Fii catalyses and accelerates the building of a more open, trusted, collaborative and enabling digital finance ecosystem to leverage financial innovation for impact and move forward, together.

Our Strategy

Data-driven

Bridging the data gap, by anchoring in Cambridge to develop a symbiotic collaboration with the Cambridge Centre For Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, whilst building a global network of expertise, academic relationships & data science capabilities.

Digital-first

Enableing the transition of technical assistance from an analogue approach to digital, by working with a team of developers & data scientists as well as global technology infrastructure providers to create new digital solutions, toolkits, and infrastructure as DPGs (hosted by the CCAF).

Enabling Scalability

Tackling the scalability issue by leveraging networked impact and enabling digital infrastructure to facilitate distributed insight creation and transfer with CCAF and other collaborators, and to deliver agile and scalable technical assistance and capacity building.

Locally Accessible

Moving away from the fly-in-fly-out model by developing long-term stakeholder relationships and deep programmatic engagements in key jurisdictions by having locally embedded teams as well as globally distributed capabilities.

Meet the Team

Bryan Zhang

CO-FOUNDER

Hunter Sims

CO-FOUNDER

Sara Coupe

HEAD OF PEOPLE

Simone di Castri

PRINCIPAL STRATEGIST

Matt Grasser

PRINCIPAL TECHNOLOGIST

Nick Clark

REGULATORY INNOVATION CO-LEAD

Philip Rowan

REGULATORY INNOVATION CO-LEAD

Jill Lagos Shemin

ADVISOR