Rafael (Rafe) Mazer

Open Finance:

• Open finance implementation research for Gates Foundation. Developed and delivered 13-country workshop on open finance implementation: secured participation of 17 regulatory agencies and global experts; designed agenda and drafted pre-read content; led workshop facilitator. Authored publications on open finance policy good practices and model design, including on implementation and governance, liability frameworks, and pricing (forthcoming).
• Co-lead on technical assistance for Chilean financial sector regulator on open finance supervision model and strategy, as well as publication on global approaches to supervision in open finance (forthcoming.)
• Author of report on Unlocking Open Finance in Kenya, which identifies opportunities, challenges, and implementation considerations for building an open finance ecosystem in Kenya. Led industry workshop with more than 80 representatives from Kenyan financial and technology sectors on possible models for open finance in Kenya.

Competition policy in the digital economy:

• Authored module on Competition and Digital Credit for Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance course on competition in digital financial services.
• Co-lead on program with African Continental Free Trade Area secretariat to develop policy approach to deal with competition issues raised by large digital platforms in Africa. Work included trainings for competition agencies in Nigeria, Tanzania and the COMESA regional entity; closed door workshops with heads of competition agencies; and policy recommendations for the implementation of Article 11 of the AFCFTA Competition Protocol.
• Team lead for project analyzing the role of competition on pricing and innovation in digital financial services in Tanzania for Innovations for Poverty Action.

Consumer protection in digital financial services:

• Lead on data analytics for responsible pricing project the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, working with six financial institutions to develop and pilot data collection and reporting templates for consumer protection supervision which will form part of BSP's supervision approach to responsible pricing and consumer protection under the Financial Consumer Protection Act.
• Senior advisor on Positive Friction in Digital Credit workstream and experiment with digital lender Pezesha. Project identified areas for integrating friction in user interfaces to improve consumer protection and repayment performance, resulting in live testing of new design interfaces with digital borrowers in Kenya.
• Authored consumer protection diagnostic for Central Bank of Kenya to assess areas for improvement in consumer protection policy and supervision.

• Developed and launched $5.4M consumer protection research program, funding more than 20 consumer protection research projects in 3 years and serving as co-principal investigator on 8 consumer protection research and policy advisory projects.
• Co-designed and led multi-stage project with Uganda Communications Commission leveraging administrative data and field experiments to reduce fraud in mobile money. Experiment resulted in 20% reduction in fraud victimization of treatment population.
• Led Competition Authority of Kenya Digital Credit Market Inquiry, leveraging digital credit transaction data to identify competition and consumer protection issues and policy reforms for Kenya's digital credit sector.

• Regulation Project Lead, Financial Sector Deepening Kenya, managing portfolio of consumer protection advisory work, drafting of market conduct regulations and data protection policy.
• Developed Data Protection Joint Agreement for GiZ Uganda's Farmers as Entrepreneurs Strategic Alliance, determining approach for ensuring compliance with data protection laws for diverse value chain of farmer cooperatives, microfinance institutions, technology service providers, agricultural offtakes and exporters.
• Project Lead on Telecommunications Data Ecosystem Study for Financial Sector Deepening Uganda and Uganda Communications Commission. Study mapped current data usage practices across financial, technology, and communications sector, and recommended policy approaches to support business model innovation, competition, and consumer protection. Led data usage workshops with more than 30 industry representatives.

• Led consumer protection field research and advisory work with financial sector authorities in Brazil, Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Tanzania, and Uganda. These activities have resulted in development of new regulations, supervisory methods and enforcement actions in digital financial services.
• Developed and delivered week-long Behavioral Research for Consumer Protection Policymaking for policymakers and providers in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Top 5 ranked course at 2016 Boulder Institute of Microfinance.
• Led consumer protection in digital credit research agenda, conducting experiments with six digital credit firms in East Africa which resulted in improvements in transparency and disclosure, awareness of credit history and loan repayment.

• Worked with national coffee grower cooperative Fedecocagua to conduct research on socio-economic and productivity data of member cooperatives, and the impact of Fair Trade business model on communities and individual farmers.