ISLAMABAD: Sima Kamil, deputy governor (Financial Inclusion, Digital Financial Services and IT) State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) stated that the women’s financial inclusion has been one of the top priorities of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS).
She was addressing an online workshop, “Financial Inclusion Gender Data in Pakistan: Today and Tomorrow”, held on Saturday under a partnership titled Women’s Financial Inclusion Data (WFID), a key platform engaged in increasing awareness about the importance of sex-disaggregated financial services data and catalysing action to increase women’s financial inclusion.
Kamil stated that there are 82 million unique bank accounts in Pakistan as of December 2020, out of which 21 million belong to women.
This represents 33 percent of adult women having a bank account.
The women’s financial inclusion is the biggest priority of the government under the NFIS.
The NFIS was reinforced by the newly-developed banking on equality policy, which was recently launched and has introduced measures for embedding a cross cutting gender lens in policies and practices of financial institutions.
The SBP deputy governor added that these include promotion of gender diversity in financial institutions and their access points, introduction of women-centric products and targeted outreach, establishment of women champions at all touch points, and formation of a policy forum on gender and finance.
One other important pillar of this policy is collection of robust gender-disaggregated data and setting targets for financial institutions.
“I am glad that this study will supplement SBP’s fundamental focus on gender disaggregated data, emphasised under our Banking on Equality policy,” Kamil added.
The workshop was also attended by Dr Shamshad Akhtar, chairperson Karandaaz; and Inez Murray, CEO Financial Alliance for Women.
Also in attendance were Anna Gincherman, a partner at Consumer Centrix (CCX); Rebecca Ruf leads peer learning, knowledge production and data analytics programs for the Financial Alliance for Women; and Mehr Shah, director Knowledge Management and Communications at Karandaaz Pakistan.
The workshop noted that the women’s access to banking services in Pakistan increased by 29 percent from 2008 to 2020, gender gap more than doubled during the same time period.
The WFID partners include the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), Data2X, the Financial Alliance for Women, the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB Invest, the International Finance Corporation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank Group, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).
In Pakistan, Karandaaz joined hands with this group to organise this workshop and to take forward the agenda of “Gender Data for Financial Inclusion”.
During the workshop, the findings of a recent study conducted by CCX, a Geneva-based strategy consulting firm for AFI, to map national ecosystem related to gender data on financial inclusion were also shared. Karandaaz helped to co-ordinate the data collection and interviews with different stakeholders for this study. AFI has an ongoing collaboration with the SBP for the Banking on Equality Policy.
The workshop underscored the importance of supply side data on women’s access and use of financial services, including volumes lent to their businesses, in order to both drive more financial services providers to design for the women of Pakistan and for policy makers to create a more supportive enabling environment for commercial engagement.
Dr Akhtar, chairperson Karandaaz while addressing the workshop said that the case for including women in the formal financial system is not based on a social or moral argument alone but also on the fact that women present a viable business proposition for service providers.
According to a Boston Consulting Group study, women control more than USD 20 trillion in consumer spending globally and are increasingly becoming a major force as entrepreneurs running small and medium enterprises. There is an unmet global credit demand of nearly US$ 1.7 trillion among women-owned SME businesses. Women are also more prudent borrowers compared to men. The Financial Alliance for Women estimated that, in 2019, the non-performing loans within its members’ portfolios was more than 50 percent higher for men than women.
Speaking to the workshop participants, Inez Murray, CEO Financial Alliance for Women said, “Access to a bank account in Pakistan has grown from 4 percent of women in 2008 to 18 percent in 2020. While this is a very positive trajectory, it means that 82 percent of women in Pakistan still do not have access to a formal bank account. The gender gap in access to financial services has widened over this period. Women’s financial inclusion is well established globally to be one of the most powerful levers for bringing households out of poverty. For better policy formulation and encouragement of commercial involvement, data and the deeper insights yielded are crucial. We hope that this study will help shed light on what has worked so far and what needs to be done in order to create a financial services sector where all are included regardless of their gender.”
The study highlighted that the untapped opportunity in the women’s market is valued at PKR 114 billion.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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