Alfred Hannig is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), a global network of policymakers and regulators dedicated to providing the world’s 2 billion unbanked safe access to the formal financial system through smart policy initiatives. Before officially launching the initiative in 2008, Dr. Hannig spent three years leading the design and development of AFI’s unique institutional peer-to-peer cooperation model, aimed at scaling up financial inclusion policy and regulatory solutions that have proven successful in developing and emerging countries. While serving as Executive Director, Dr. Hannig has overseen the growth of AFI from an organization with a few enthusiastic members, into an independent global alliance and important knowledge hub of policymaking and regulatory institutions from more than 90 developing and emerging nations.
Dr. Hannig is a member of the AFI Board of Directors and heads the AFI Management Unit. He continues to take an active role in championing the AFI Network concept and promoting the essential role of financial inclusion policy for the health of both the unbanked and the global economic system.
Before his work with AFI, Dr. Hannig served in leading management, policy advisory, training and research focused positions around the world including assignments with: Bank Indonesia, Bank of Uganda, Superintendencia de Bancos in Bolivia; Head of the Financial Systems Development Unit at German Technical Cooperation, and with the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, while also serving as the Federal Republic of Germany’s representative for the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP).
Dr. Hannig received his Ph.D. on financial sector reform from Freie Universität Berlin and has authored several publications focused on financial inclusion policy and regulatory issues as well as microfinance.