Antonique Koning

Senior Financial Sector Specialist

Antonique Koning leads CGAP’s work on Women’s Economic Empowerment through financial inclusion and manages the Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii) convened by CGAP. She has more than 25 years of experience working on inclusive finance and has expertise in gender norms affecting women’s financial inclusion, young women’s financial inclusion, responsible finance and customer centricity.  Antonique also led CGAP’s work on customer outcomes-based approaches to consumer protection regulation and supervision, and  contributed to guidance on customer empowerment and employee and agent empowerment for CGAP’s Customer Centric Guide for which she authored a case study on Pioneer Microinsurance.  

Before joining CGAP in 2004, Antonique gained hands-on experience developing and implementing microcredit programs in El Salvador and working with savings banks globally. 

She has a Master’s degree in International Trade Management and Policy from the University of Birmingham, and a Master’s degree in Applied Economics from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Antonique is based in Belgium, and speaks Spanish, French, and Dutch.

By Antonique Koning

Research

Greenfield MFIs in Sub-Saharan Africa

This Forum explores the contribution of greenfield MFIs to access to finance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).The greenfield model has come a long way in a short time in SSA from seven greenfield MFIs in 2006 to 31 by 2012.
Blog

Banking on Including Women in Nigeria

In Nigeria, Diamond Bank is using customer insights to design and market a new savings product for women.
Blog

Six To-Dos Now for Responsible Investors

At the mid-year Social Investor Roundtable, the Sangam Group (CEOs of the 10 largest MIVs) and annual Development Finance Institutions (DFI) consultation on responsible finance agreed on a “to-do” list of six concrete actions for investors.
Blog

Sustainable Capacity Building Services Market: A Long Way To Go

Despite years of donor programs that have had an explicit goal of helping build the market for capacity building, the market—where it exists—is highly subsidized with few viable providers able to adapt to an evolving landscape. Can we change this?
Blog

Nigeria Targets Real Financial Inclusion

In 2012, the Nigerian government set formal targets for financial inclusion and aims to bring down financial exclusion to 20% by 2020.