Every year, the Financial Alliance for Women recognizes member institutions doing exceptional work to serve women customers, enable women entrepreneurs, close financial inclusion gaps, and advance gender equity within their organizations. The 2026 Champion of the Female Economy Awards are coming this October — and the clock is already ticking on eligibility. Members must submit the Female Economy Analytics Survey (FEAS) by June 18 to be considered.
Ten Categories, One Survey
This year’s awards span ten categories, including a brand-new Inclusion Champion award, recognizing financial institutions driving financial inclusion by enabling very-small and informal enterprises at scale. These categories reflect the full spectrum of what it means to be a leader in the Female Economy, and include:
- Access to Finance Champion
- Impact Champion
- Inclusion Champion (new for 2026)
- Non-Financial Services Champion
- Digital Innovation Champion
- Women in Leadership Champion
- Gender Data Champion
- Engagement Champion
- Individual Champion
- Outstanding Contributor
Winners are selected based on FEAS data submitted and evaluated against strict quantitative metrics. To make it as fair as possible, we look not only at members’ performance in a given year, but also on year-over-year growth, and comparisons to national benchmarks from external sources.
What Winners Get
Recognition at the Champion of the Female Economy Awards isn’t just a trophy (though there is a trophy). Winners are celebrated at the Awards Ceremony, featured across Alliance communications, and given a PR toolkit to amplify the news at home. When you win a Champion of the Female Economy Award, you gain external visibility and validation as a leader in serving Women’s Markets. That carries weight: with your board, with investors, regulators, customers, and competitors.
Beyond the awards themselves, members that respond to the survey also receive annual individualized benchmarking reports with comparisons to regional and global peers, across several dimensions—segment, financial products, non-financial services and channels, as well as workforce DEI — for a robust picture of the business case for your Women’s Markets program.
The Dates to Know
The survey is live now. Please mark these dates:
- June 18: Final deadline for awards eligibility
- July 30: Final deadline to submit and receive benchmarking reports
- October 15: Awards ceremony
Your data tells a story. Make sure it gets told.
Meet last year’s Female Economy champions.
Explore aggregate results from the annual Female Economy Analytics Survey.
