Glenn Westley – Bio Sketch

Glenn Westley is an independent consultant working in the area of credit unions and microfinance. He was a senior adviser at the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), housed at the World Bank, during 2008–11 after nearly 31 years at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). During his time at the IDB, he held a number of positions, including senior adviser for microenterprise, senior economist in the Office of the Chief Economist and acting division chief of the Development Policy Research Division. He contributed to the design of over 100 projects at the IDB, especially in the area of credit unions and microfinance, where he worked since the early 1990s.

In 1998, Glenn and Brian Branch held a large international conference at the IDB on the subject of rehabilitating, supervising, governing and linking credit unions, which led to the jointly edited book, Safe Money: Building Effective Credit Unions in Latin America. Glenn also co-authored (with Tor Jansson and Ramón Rosales) the book, Principles and Practices for Regulating and Supervising Microfinance, which examines how to regulate and supervise both credit unions and other microfinance institutions. This book has been cited numerous times in publications by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, located on the Bank of International Settlements website.

Glenn repeatedly assisted the Central Bank of Paraguay and the Superintendency of Ecuador in designing new bodies of credit union regulations.

Glenn received a doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and has published numerous books, articles and monographs in the area of credit unions and microfinance, including Credit Union Policies and Performance in Latin America (with Sherrill Shaffer).