Muhammad Mushaf KHAN
Salford Business School
Biography
Dr. Muhammad Mus’haf Khan is a development economist and financial policy specialist whose work sits at the intersection of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), financial inclusion, and agricultural finance systems. He brings over 15 years of experience designing, financing, and implementing large-scale reforms across government, multilateral development programs, and financial institutions.
He is based at Salford Business School, where he is part of the Economics and Finance academic community and also served as Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Lead for the Doctoral School, contributing to doctoral policy design, research governance, and institutional reform. He is also the Founder and Curator of TEDxUniversityofSalford, leading initiatives that translate research into policy-relevant public discourse.
Mus’haf’s research examines how interoperable digital identity, payment systems, and financial platforms reshape access to finance, risk-sharing, and market integration in developing economies. His doctoral work focuses on interoperable FinTech architectures and their role in overcoming supply-side constraints of formal financial institutions.
Prior to academia, Mus’haf served as Financial Advisor to the Government of Punjab, where he was directly involved in the design and execution of World Bank, USAID, UKAID, AUSAID, ADB, and BMGF-supported programs. He authored the finance and digital finance components of the Punjab Agriculture Policy (2018) and contributed to subsequent policy iterations. His work supported the launch of system-level interventions including e-Credit, Farmer Card, Area Yield Index Insurance (AYII), e-Warehouse Receipt Financing, and the Connected Agriculture Punjab Platform—programs that collectively restructured agricultural credit delivery, risk mitigation, and subsidy targeting at national scale.
Earlier in his career, he held senior roles in the financial sector at major commercial banks, overseeing large asset portfolios and leading digital credit and SME finance initiatives. This dual exposure to policy design and balance-sheet finance informs his applied research and advisory work.
Mus’haf is an FLPFI Fellow (2019) of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. His current research extends to cross-border payments, financial integrity, and systemic resilience, with ongoing work on interoperable DPI and financial integration prepared for international policy research forums, including the IMF research community.
His work is defined by institution-building, regulatory realism, and implementation at scale, rather than pilot projects or conceptual advocacy.
Areas of Research
Financial inclusion, Financial Services Management and Development, Sustainable Finance, FinTech, Digital Transformation, Digital Public Infrastructure, Interoperability, and Neurodiversity.
Qualifications
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PhD Economics
2022 - 2025 -
MSc Financial Services Management,
2011 - 2012 -
BA Hons Financial Services
2006 - 2009