Bhagwan Chowdhry

Bhagwan Chowdhry, Professor of Finance and Faculty Director of the Master of Financial Engineering program at UCLA Anderson, recently proposed a Financial Access at Birth (FAB) initiative in which every child born in the world is given an initial deposit of $100 in an online bank account to guarantee that everyone in the world will have access to financial services in a few decades. He has developed a new model for “Franchising Microfinance” and is studying the feasibility of implementing the model with a microfinance institution.

Chowdhry has also taught at the University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Indian School of Business. He received his PhD in 1989 from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He also has an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Iowa and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology. He has been on the editorial board of a number of finance journals. He teaches International Finance, Corporate Finance, and Financial Institutions at UCLA. He has also organized and taught executive education programs on financial eerivatives, corporate risk management, and valuation in Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.