🇺🇸 Internship in the United States 💳 Financial Inclusion and Infrastructure at the World Bank 🏦

WBG Pioneers, the World Bank Group's Internship Program, offers undergraduate and postgraduate students a high impact learning experience at the heart of global development. Participants gain hands-on experience in a diverse and dynamic environment, contribute fresh perspectives and innovative ideas, and connect with international professionals working to end poverty on a livable planet.

🏛️ Background and Organizational Context

The Financial Services Sector and Financial Inclusion team belongs to the Knowledge Bank, a part of the World Bank Group that designs and delivers scalable solutions: products or policies that help low- and middle-income countries address their most urgent development challenges. Its focus is on financial inclusion of individuals and businesses, meaning micro, small and medium enterprises, and enabling digital financial services. To get there, the team facilitates legal and regulatory reforms and helps countries set up their financial infrastructures: payment, clearing and settlement systems, as well as credit and collateral registries.

The team works globally and focuses on its field of expertise rather than on any particular country or region, so many of its colleagues work with governments or regulators from many different places, and it is not unusual to be simultaneously working on projects in, for example, North Africa and Latin America. Providing confidential, impartial and evidence-based advice to central banks and other financial sector regulators around the world is the most important part of the work, but the team also develops and manages databases related to financial inclusion and infrastructure, helps other colleagues on their projects, conducts research and represents the World Bank Group at global standard-setting bodies such as the Financial Stability Board or the Bank for International Settlements.

📊 A data-analysis internship inside the same organisation: Internship in the 🇺🇸 United States 📊 Social Development Research at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 🌍 → https://youthworkshub.org/20830

💳 Duties and Responsibilities

The intern will help with day-to-day data analyst work and have the opportunity to experience how the team works with clients by attending meetings and helping prepare presentations and briefs. They will also be expected to:

🔎 Design and execute creative strategies to find and acquire relevant data, including web scraping, integrating APIs, use of administrative datasets, survey data and social media

💻 Develop code in Stata, R or Python to analyze data and automate workflows

📝 Draft sections of reports and presentations based on project work

🤖 Support the use and integration of large language models for drafting, coding and handling complex data problems, including building agentic workflows, connecting models to data via protocols like MCP, and integrating AI into research

In addition to ad-hoc data work, the intern will pursue a research or operational project, taking the leading role and delivering actionable insights with minimal supervision. Projects envisioned for the winter cycle include integrating the team's data with a corporate AI platform, using social media data and on-chain records to find information about the use of cryptocurrencies for payments and derive additional insights such as estimating unofficial exchange rates, and designing a workflow for AI-assisted review of documents such as procurement documentation, payment scheme rules or project proposals.

💡 A financial-services trainee role with a product focus: Internship in 🇨🇿 Czechia 📊 Product Management Trainee in Financial Services 💡 → https://youthworkshub.org/19734

✅ Selection Criteria

🎓 Candidates must be currently in the final year of an undergraduate program

💼 Candidates must have 0 to 6 years of relevant professional experience

📚 Academic background in social sciences such as economics, finance, international relations, public policy or political science, or STEM fields, and other majors may be suitable, but enthusiasm and aptitude for data-driven work are essential, along with a demonstrated interest in development work and the World Bank Group's mission

💻 Proficiency in statistical analysis tools such as R, Stata or Python and familiarity with large language models, demonstrated by links to school projects, a GitHub profile or other contributions

🏦 Interest in payments or financial inclusion and eagerness to learn, with shortlisted candidates expected to have reviewed relevant publications on the World Bank's financial inclusion and payment systems pages

✍️ Strong writing skills in English, and fluency in other languages is an advantage

🌍 Ability to work effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and across varied settings, strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities within tight deadlines