Our Story
The Barrier-Free Finance Initiative originated from individual practitioners with a shared passion for disability rights and financial inclusion, who recognised a gap in the financial inclusion of people with disabilities, and committed to work together and engage others to change this.
As a financial inclusion specialist, a person with a disability and a passionate disability advocate, Paul has a strong personal mission to advance financial inclusion of people with disabilities. Alison transitioned from a career in commercial financial services to pursue her goal of social inclusion, working in the disability and microfinance sectors.
Alison and Paul met in Cambodia while implementing a 4-year project to advance access to finance for people with disabilities, in collaboration with organisations of persons with disabilities(OPDs) and disability and financial services actors.
Seeking an expert to assess and disseminate learnings from the project, they connected with Shashaank, a former banker who has dedicated himself to advancing economic opportunities for people with disabilities through private-sector engagement. Leveraging Shashaank’s expertise, they collaborated to create replication guidelines for financial services providers.
Acknowledging the existing gap and missed opportunity in disability inclusion both from the client and the provider perspective, they decided to start an initiative to engage like-minded practitioners to address this. Clara then joined, bringing her unique cross-cutting experience acquired in both the financial and disability inclusion sectors.
Together, we launched the Barrier-Free Finance Initiative to promote a client-centric approach to drive structural change and lift the barriers preventing people with disabilities from accessing responsible financial services.