Banking on Women: Strategies to Increase Access and Engagement

Nov 20, 2019 | by The SEEP Network

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Across low and middle-income countries, significant gender gaps persist in women’s access to and usage of financial services. This is despite the fact that financial service providers (FSPs) have a clear business case for serving women: they save more relative to their total income than men do, pay back their loans at a higher rate, buy more products per customer and are more loyal to their banks if they are served well (GBA 2014). However, many FSPs miss out on female customers because women can’t easily access their services or because their products and services are not sufficiently tailored to meet women’s needs, behavior and preferences.

In this session, presenters from AWEF, Opportunity International and the UN Capital Development Fund discussed different strategies they have used to design and deliver financial services tailored to the female market segment. In Jordan, AWEF has supported Dinarak, a leading e-wallet provider, to roll out a female agent network and, in Ghana, Opportunity International Savings and Loans (OISL), has piloted an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service to deliver financial education to women and drive engagement with its savings products. And in Malawi and Zambia UNCDF has been working on increasing financial inclusion through digital finance. Through these case studies, presenters shared with the audience innovative ways in which they can improve women’s access to financial services in diverse contexts.

Moderator

Rebecca Kinahan, Program Manager, Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund & Senior Consultant, Economic Growth–Delivery Unit, DAI

Rebecca is a Senior Consultant with DAI’s Economic Growth Delivery Unit and is currently the Program Manager for the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund and the newly launched Strengthening Host and Refugee Populations in Ethiopia (SHARPE) programme. In addition, Rebecca provides management and technical support to DAI’s broader portfolio of economic growth programming with her main areas of interest and expertise being the application of market systems approaches. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of York and a Masters in International Development from IEP- Sciences Po.

Speakers

Sabal Majali, Market Systems Analyst, Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund

Sabal Al Majali works as a Lead Market Analyst for the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF). Sabal co-leads AWEF's Financial Inclusion (FI) program in Jordan, including designing and developing the FI program strategy, focusing on catalyzing access to digital financial services (DFS) among underprivileged women. Sabal holds a bachelor’s degree of Industrial Engineering from the University of Jordan.

Dana Lunberry, Customer Experience and Research Manager, Digital Financial Services Team, Opportunity International

Dana is a subject matter expert and strategist specializing in digital services and infrastructures. For over a decade, she has worked in financial services on a wide range of Financial Inclusion projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Currently, Dana leads strategic programs for Opportunity International’s Digital Financial Services Team and teaches courses for the industry and academia on topics including strategic management, business transformation, payments infrastructures, and consumer behavior. At Opportunity, she designed and leads a course for financial institutions titled “Digital Financial Services and Gender Strategy for Financial Inclusion” which is aimed at tackling various gender gaps in digital financial services. Dana is currently pursuing her doctorate degree in Information Systems and Innovations in the Department of Management at the London School of Economics, where she earned her MS degree in Gender, Development and Globalization.

Mary Pat McVay, Research and Knowledge Manager, Opportunity International

Mary Pat brings 30 years of experience in microenterprise development to the task of empowering women in the developing world through market-driven, tech-savvy solutions. She holds a master’s degree in Urban Planning from MIT, where her thesis focused on the power of markets to bring appropriate technology solutions to women in Africa. At Opportunity, Mary Pat leads practical research on women’s empowerment, digital finance, savings mobilization and agricultural finance.

Nandini Harihareswara, Digital Finance Technical Specialist, United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)

Nandini Harihareswara is a Digital Finance Regional Technical Specialist, responsible for the implementation of the United Nations Capital Development Fund Digital Economy Strategy in Zambia and Malawi. She has worked for the last four years advancing digital financial inclusion with Mobile Network Operators, Banks, FinTechs, Central Banks, Telco Regulators and others. She was a founding member of the USAID Digital Development Division in 2011 and served as the Strategy & Operations Chief, and Senior Digital Finance Advisor.

This webinar was hosted by The SEEP Network in collaboration with the Arab Women's Enterprise Fund,
as a part of the Women's Economic Empowerment in Market Systems Learning Series.