Shaping Bangladesh Fintech Ecosystem for the Future

Md. Arfan Ali is a legendary banker and visionary icon of Digital Bangladesh. He is the pioneer of Agent Banking in Bangladesh. With his innovative mindset, leadership and perseverance, he has promoted the Financial Inclusion of the unbanked and underserved people of the country and launched his business enterprise, Zaytoon Business Solutions, to develop a ‘Payment Aggregator’ for the first time in Bangladesh. This aggregator will ensure all financial services are easily accessible to the rural unreached people. He also introduced agent banking in the rural areas of Bangladesh which in turn facilitated government safety net payments, passport fees payment and post office digital banking.

Benjamin Quinlan is the CEO and Managing Partner of Quinlan & Associates and the former Chairman of Hong Kong's FinTech Association. He now leads the Innovation & Technology Committee at the Australian Chamber of Commerce. As Adjunct Professor at AIT School of Management and Conference Ambassador for Hong Kong Tourism Board, he plays a pivotal role in tech advancement. With advisory roles in startups, he is also known as an influential FinTech figure across Asia. Formerly Head of Strategy at Deutsche Bank, Benjamin's insights are quoted by top media like Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. As an accomplished keynote speaker, his expertise spans global financial services.

Hrushikesh Mehta is Senior Vice President – Financial Services at ONDC where he is helping democratize access to financial services in India. Prior to this he was a volunteer at iSPIRT and Co-Founder, CredAll. He is responsible for driving the awareness and adoption of standardized Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that facilitate digital lending. The APIs are called the Open Credit Enablement Network or OCEN. There are many lending processes that have not been uniformly automated. OCEN's APIs standardize these so that ecosystem players like loan service providers (LSPs) and lenders can work together to create all-digital lending flows over the life cycle of the loan without needing custom integrations. All-digital loans reduce the cost of acquisition and hence enable cash flow based lending (sachet sized finance) which was previously unviable when manual processes were involved.

Mr. Mamun Rashid is the Country Clients and Markets lead at PwC Bangladesh. He was the founding Managing Partner at PwC Bangladesh. Besides, he also plays the lead role for financial service advisory in Bangladesh.Mr. Rashid, best known as a leading banker and economic analyst in Bangladesh. His banking career spans over 26 years. During these 26 years he served with three international banks- ANZ Grindlays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Citibank, N.A. at home and abroad. He was the Chief Executive Officer at Citibank, N.A. Bangladesh. Besides banking Mr. Rashid had been teaching Strategy and Commercial Banking at various public and private universities for last 27 years. During 2011 to 2013 period, he was the Professor and Director with BRAC Business School at BRAC University.Mr. Rashid is the immediate past Chairman of ICC standing committee on banking techniques and practices for Bangladesh; Vice Chairman, BD Venture Limited- a venture Capital Firm to fund growth enterprises; Chairman, Financial Excellence Limited- an institution dedicated to the development of Bangladesh financial markets. He is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors at Marie Stopes Bangladesh, an UK headquartered int’l health NGO dedicated to underprivileged mother and child.Mr. Rashid holds a master’s in economics from Bangladesh and a master’s in business administration from Henley Business School, UK. He also attended post graduate courses at Kellogg School of Management, Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School in USA, London Business School, UK and INSEAD, France. He is a Certified Credit Professional by OMEGA, London. He received US State Department award for Corporate Excellence.Mr. Rashid is widely quoted on Banking and Economic Affairs in national and international media. He has published more than 800 articles on banking, economic and business issues and authored 15 books on contemporary business and economic issues.