Harish Natarajan

Lead Financial Sector Specialist in the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice at The World Bank

Harish is a Lead Financial Sector Specialist in the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank. He leads a global team working on payments and market infrastructures topics. He is a core member of the cross-sectoral teams in the World Bank working on Universal Financial Access 2020, ID for Development, Government payments, Digital Economy and FinTech. Harish represents the World Bank in several working groups of the Committee on Payment Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements, International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on topics related to payments, market infrastructures and Fintech. Harish was a lead contributor to the preparation of the IMF-World Bank Bali Fintech Agenda and is a co-chair of a CPMI-World Bank taskforce on Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion. Prior to joining the World Bank, Harish worked with VISA Inc, in the South Asia region in various senior level positions in business development, operations and risk management. Prior to VISA, Harish worked in in Citigroup, Infosys and other technology companies, primarily in the areas of payment systems and retail banking. Harish holds an under-graduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT-Madras, India and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management, from IIM-Calcutta, India specializing in IT systems and Finance.