Dr. Bansal leads the Smart Campaign’s work in South and Southeast Asia at the Center of Financial Inclusion, Accion. A passion for equity and women’s issues, combined with an education in banking and finance, has led her to an extensive professional engagement with microfinance. Hema is an international development and microfinance specialist with more than 15 years of experience working in India and South and South East Asia on consumer protection. Hema manages Smart Campaign initiatives in eight countries, including India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Philippines, Pakistan, Nepal, Cambodia and Laos. At Smart Campaign she is responsible for developing regional strategy, fund raising, project management, product development, network and regulator partnerships to advance implementation of consumer protection standards with multiple players in the financial inclusion space and promoting Smart Certification. Recently, her work at CFI is centred around incorporating responsible finance in digital transformation and also disseminating digital credit standards. Hema has also done extensive work in India on setting up a Code of Conduct for Business Correspondents and designing monitoring systems.
In past Hema has been an Assistant Professor and RBI Unit In-Charge at the M.S. University of Baroda. She has been a recipient of Ford Foundation and Reserve Bank of India Fellowships and has also published in India and internationally. Hema holds a master’s and a doctorate in banking and business finance from the University of Baroda under the RBI Fellowship program.