Financial inclusion | ACCESS Advisory

Date:September 26, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 8: Policy approaches for promoting women’s financial inclusion (Part 4)––Basic Concepts and Process for Designing a Sex Disaggregated Data Reporting System

The following information is draw from an Alliance for Financial inclusion (AFI)-funded project in which ACCESS supported the National Bank of Cambodia to implement SDD in 2022. A. Concept and background to SDD Due to social norms, family responsibilities, and their responsibility for overall household financial management, women’s financial service needs differ from men. Most…

Date:September 4, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 7: The “Three-Legged Stool” –– ACCESS’s recommended policy approach for promoting women’s financial inclusion

This blog series began its discussion of policy approaches by noting that one of the key challenges regulators face in promoting women’s financial inclusion is a lack of buy-in from FSPs. In the previous post, we noted three approaches for increasing FSP buy-in: In Papua New Guinea, the ADB-funded MEP program provided external financing for…

Date:August 27, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 6: Policy approaches for promoting women’s financial inclusion (Part 2)

As discussed in the previous post, one of the key challenges regulators face in promoting women’s financial inclusion is a lack of buy-in from financial service providers (FSPs). So far, there is no clear or standard formula or even a set of effective actions that regulators and other stakeholders have taken to promote women’s financial inclusion…

Date:August 14, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 5: Policy approaches for promoting women’s financial inclusion (Part 1)

The key challenges regulators face in promoting women’s financial inclusion is a lack of buy-in from FSPs. Around the world, many financial institutions, even those whose mission and operations are geared toward financial inclusion, believe that they are already including women as their clients. Indeed, many already target women specifically. Since their portfolio performance and…

Date:August 5, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 4: Drivers of the Gender Gap in Financial Services, Part 3: Limited or inappropriate non-financial services

Women need a broad range of non-financial products and services to meet their diverse needs throughout their lives. Some of these are the same as what a men need, but many are affected by the barriers and circumstances particular to women’s contexts. Gender transformative approaches such as Gender Action Learning Systems (GALS) and others, as…

Date:July 29, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion, Organizational Development

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 3: Drivers of the Gender Gap in Financial Services, Part 2: Supply side gaps

While gender norms affect financial inclusion from the demand side, how financial service providers (FSPs) respond to those norms has a dramatic impact on women’s inclusion. There are two main factors on the supply side that negatively affect how FSPs serve women. The first is that FSPs do not invest enough in serving women. Many…

Date:July 23, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Development Finance, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 2: Drivers of the Gender Gap in Financial Services, Part 1: Gender Norms

In financial systems, as elsewhere, gender norms are pervasive and influence the behavior of all participants it, including consumers, financial service providers (FSPs), policymakers, and providers of supporting functions such as agent networks and credit registries. Deeply embedded behaviors and beliefs driven by gender norms shape the incentives and capacities of financial system actors that…

Date:July 19, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion Series 1: Overview of Gender Issues in Financial Inclusion

From its origins in microcredit programs in the 1980s and 1990s, the financial inclusion movement has consistently identified women as a key target segment. The focus on women has been driven by three main factors. First, women are usually responsible for managing day-to-day household finances in most countries where financial inclusion is still a challenge….

Date:January 22, 2024Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Development Finance, Financial inclusion

Privatizing Poverty Part 11: Climate Change Gives the Lie to Market-Based Development

The tenth post in this blog series singled out microfinance, and financial inclusion in general, as the “money pump” that powers market-based poverty reduction programs. Whether the specifics of the program involves generating additional income, improving skills, adopting new technologies for mitigating and adapting to climate change, strengthening homes against natural disasters, or building resilience,…

Date:November 16, 2023Posted By:Ron BevacquaCategory:Blog, Financial inclusion

Privatizing Poverty Series Part 10: Financial inclusion––the money pump of market-based development

This blog series has traced the history of the idea that promoting entrepreneurship and innovation is the key to unlocking economic growth and reducing poverty. As we have seen, it is distinctly American in its conceptualisation: forged in an economic context of the first advanced economy to experience de-industrialisation, in a social context in which…