Daryl Collins

Daryl Collins is co-author of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day. She’s also a senior associate at Bankable Frontier Associates, a niche consulting practice in Boston. She was the principal investigator of the South African Financial Diaries and is now leading the research efforts at Bankable Frontiers, building on an expertise in the demand-side dynamics of development finance. Collins began her career as an emerging market economist at a New York investment bank before moving to South Africa in the late 1990s. She ultimately joined the finance faculty of the University of Cape Town, where she leveraged a successful career in portfolio management into research on the financial behavior of the poor. She has published extensively on financial market behavior in developing countries. Collins holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics.