Mr. Matteo Marinelli is a Financial Inclusion Professional. Under his latest post in Myanmar he was the CEO of Maha Agriculture Public Co. Ltd, an agricultural-focused-fintech-financial service provider owned by Myanma Awba Group and the International Finance Corporation. He has been working in microfinance, agri-finance and MSME banking for the past 20 years across three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia.
He began his career with Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh and after short term consulting assignments in Tanzania, Afghanistan, Serbia and Thailand, he did relocate to Geneva, Switzerland, working for Blue Orchard Finance, an impact investing asset management firm specialized in lending to financial institutions in emerging markets. Subsequently, he joined a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings, Fullerton Financial Holdings, first as a Project Manager based out of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, responsible for the start-up of a greenfield MSME banking co-investment which led to the creation of Cambodia Post Bank and then since 2013 as Fullerton country representative based out of Yangon, Myanmar, responsible for the set-up and launch of Fullerton Myanmar. It is here in Myanmar that he got interested and became familiar with the challenges faced by agri-businesses and small-scale farmers who lacked access to capital and markets and that’s what brought him to Myanma Awba Group and Maha Agriculture Microfinance. Since January 2022 he has been a Team Lead and a Senior Investment Advisor for a group of investors willing to build a digital FSP serving rural and urban customers in Ethiopia with a focus on smallholder farmers.
Born and educated in Italy with a Master's degree in Economics, he has had academic exchange programs at the University of Niigata in Japan, at the New York University, at the London School of Economics and at the University of California in Berkeley. He has an executive management diploma from INSEAD and speaks fluent English, Spanish, and French.