Asma Mobarek
Founder Director of MFI Working Group
Asma Mobarek is currently working at Cardiff University Business School. She has taught at the Stockholm Business School at Stockholm University, Sweden, the University of Botswana, and the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in her early career. Her current research interests include Sustainable Finance, Bank governance and ESG, corporate social responsibility, Governance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), MFIs Business Model, Corporate governance in Banking, Contagion and co-movement of financial markets, Environmental Degradation and Digital economy, etc. She has completed several internal and externally funded research projects. She was a member of the project team in an EU-funded project on Pro-MHI Micro-Health Insurance at Botswana University. She has also obtained approximately GBP 175, 000 from Handelsbanken's Jan Wallanders Foundation, Nasdaq OMX Nordic Foundation, and Vinnova foundation in Sweden. Asma Mobarek’s research papers also appeared in the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Financial Stability, the Journal of Financial Services Research, and the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions, and Money, Review of Quantitative Finance & Accounting. She is currently working as a guest editor of open access Sustainability Journal (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/ESG_sus).
Md. Abdul Awal
Executive Director, Credit and Development Forum (CDF)
Md. Abdul Awal completed his studies in Agricultural Economics from Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh and started his career in Banking as a senior officer with a state-owned commercial Bank of Bangladesh in 1980.While in Sonali Bank, he pioneered innovating and developing three Microcredit & Microenterprise products He joined Credit and Development Forum (CDF) as Director in 2004 and promoted to the position of the Executive Director (CEO) in 2009. He also worked for Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF)-a wholesale funding agency, for some time as Microenterprise Specialist.
In CDF, Awal has been very successfully widening the network and partnership with the organizations-at home(MFIs, banks-private, public & foreign, donor agencies, research organizations, Federation of NGOs in Bangladesh, etc) and abroad( Microcredit Summit Campaign, SEEP Network, BWTP, INAFI, SAMN, etc).
Awal very successfully completed different overseas post-graduates trainings at Univ of Bradford (UK), Kenya School of Monetary Studies-KSMS (Nairobi, Kenya), Naropa Univ. (Colorado, USA), Asian Institute of Management (Manila) and Harvard Business School, Boston, MA. He participated in many overseas summits/conferences on microcredits, e.g, Microcredit Summits in Delhi, New York, Dhaka, Amman(Jordan) , Mexico, Halifax(Canada), Bali(Indonesia) & Manila(the Philippines),Abu Dhabi, BWTP’s Asia Network Summits & Forum’s Meetings in Beijing, Hanoi, Colombo, Manila, Cambodia and Shanghai and SPTF Annual Meetings & Conferences in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, Jordan & Panama City; Volunteers conference in Amsterdam, SEEP Global Summit in Washington D.C.(every year he has to attend this meeting). He led many exposure visits on microfinance (e.g., Indonesia, India, Kenya and Nepal, China, Vietnam and Kenya). Md. Abdul Awal, Executive Director, CDF chaired/spoke in many overseas microcredit events, namely Microcredit Summits, SEEP’s Global Network Summit in Washington D.C., Asia Microfinance Investment Conference in Singapore, Asia Microfinance Forum’s Conference in Hanoi, Colombo, Shanghai and Manila, Convergence 2015 held in Paris and European Microfinance Platform held in Luxembourg, m etc. He is a member on BWTP Advisory Council based in Brisbane, Australia & SAMN (promoted by ACTED in Paris) Board of Directors. Currently, he’s chairperson of SAMN.
M. A. Baqui Khalily
M. A. Baqui Khalily, a former Professor of finance at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, retired as the Executive Director, Institute of Microfinance (a research institute in Bangladesh) in 2015. Professor Khalily did his MS and Ph.D in rural finance from the Ohio State University, USA. Several areas have dominated his research over the past three decades – micro finance and inclusive finance, enterprise development, climate change and adaptation, and poverty analysis. Professor Khalily has authored and co-authored quite a large number of publications in national and international journals in the area of micro finance and poverty. Given the fact that microfinance institutions (MFIs) follow interest rate regime, he is now working with some MFIs to experiment with Islamic microfinance and transform traditional MFIs into Islamic microfinance institutions. In addition, his role as a board member in different organizations in the past including PKSF and Bank Asia has enriched his knowledge with blending of theory and practice in his field of research. Professor Khalily now teaches as a Professor at the University of Asia Pacific, Bangladesh.
Dr. M. Emranul Haque
Dr Haque is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester.
He is also a Research Fellow of the Centre for Growth and Business Cycles Research at the University of Manchester.
He was a recipient of the British Commonwealth Scholarship for PhD study, and later a recipient of ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship. He was a Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for Globalisation and Economic Policy (GEP) at the University of Nottingham. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Research and Training Institute (IRTI) of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).
He has been invited as Guest Lecturer to advise at the Ministry of Finance of China on “Fiscal Data Management”, and at the OECD Integrity Forum on “Curbing Corruption – Investing in Growth”.
He is a regular speaker at international conferences and workshops.
He is also engaged with industry partners by providing research consultancy.
His research interests are:
- Relationships between Economic Growth and
- Corruption, Governance and Public Policy
- Human Capital, and
- International Trade, as well as
- Islamic Finance and Islamic Microfinance
His research has been published in leading academic journals such as
- World Development
- Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control
- BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
- BE Journal of Theoretical Economics
- Economics Letters
- Journal of Government and Economics
- Manchester School
- European Journal of Political Economy
- Economics of Governance
- Journal of Economic Studies
- Economics Bulletin
Dr. Hamid Uddin
Hamid has a Ph.D. in Finance and Accounting from the National University of Singapore and currently is an Associate Professor at the School of Management, University of Bradford. Previously, he worked as an academic researcher in Singapore, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. Hamid is an active researcher, supervised several Ph.D. students, implemented funded research projects, and published widely in finance and accounting areas. Hamid’s current research focuses on (i) financial intermediation, (ii) cybersecurity risk in financial institutions, and (iii) corporate governance. In the financial intermediation research stream, Hamid has been researching how microfinance institutions (MFIs) manage extremely high credit risk in lending to marginal people who have no creditworthiness and no access to traditional commercial lending by banks. Management of extremely high credit risk is crucial for the development of sustainable microfinance. More about Hamid’s profile.