Alejandra Ríos
Alejandra Rios is an expert in inclusive finance with a focus on small-and-medium (SME) enterprises, advising leading commercial banks and microfinance institutions in emerging markets for the past twenty years. Her portfolio in MSME finance consultancy covers change management, housing finance, rural finance, institution-building, strategic planning, and credit management.
Alejandra joined CCX Inclusive Business in 2019 as the senior SME expert, overseeing strategy development, capacity building and lending. In addition, she works closely with financial institutions during the execution phase and ensures successful delivery of strategic initiatives by fostering dialogue with stakeholders involved.
Prior to her role at CCX, Alejandra served as Director of Credit for the Strategic Advisory Team at Women’s World Banking. She partnered with client financial institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA, Latin America and the Carribean to develop market entry strategies and new product development, from research, business planning, change management, marketing, implementation, to measurement and evaluation frameworks.
She joined Women’s World Banking after providing consulting services for the organization and other technical advisory institutions such as Sparkassenstiftung fur Internationale Kooperation (SIK), International Project Consult (IPC) among others in Latin America, Middle East and Africa, the Balkans and the Philippines. She worked with commercial banks and MFIs to build sound lending structures to able to expand to MSME.
Alejandra holds a “Diplôme d’études supérieures spécialisées” (DESS) in Agricultural and Industrial Projects Analyst, a Master’s degree in Financial & Monetary Markets and a BA in Economics from the University of Rennes, France.
She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and German.
Country Expertise: Latin America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Paraguay. Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Malawi. MENA: Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia. Asia-Pacific: Philippines. Western Europe & North America: France, Germany, United States.
Topical Expertise: Gender-intelligent Finance, SME Banking, Retail Banking, Microfinance (group & individual lending), Credit Processes, Risk Assessment, Cashflow-based Lending, Agricultural Finance, Value Chain Finance, Rural Finance, Housing Finance, Savings products, Non-financial services, Capacity Building & Training (front- & back-office, Monitoring & Evaluation / Impact Evaluation, Management Information Systems, Market Research (focus groups, surveys, desk research), Institutional Diagnostics, Project Management.