In 2021, 76 percent of Alliance members reported their women-centered programs being in the “advanced” or “intermediate” stage versus just 37 percent of members when they joined the Alliance. This is an extraordinary impact—one that reflects the virtuous cycle of our model: Members share their know-how through peer learning activities to help other members move their programs forward. In turn, the secretariat codifies knowledge into InBriefs, Case Studies and other tools, so that prospect members feel confident that they too can take on the women’s market, and the membership grows.

This virtuous cycle has never been stronger. In 2020, nearly two-thirds of our members contributed expertise to their fellow members—a 40-percent increase from 2019—by leading peer learning sessions, mentoring peers and working with the Alliance team to develop the many resources available in our members-only Vault Library. Ninety-three percent of members expressed a desire to share their expertise in 2021, demonstrating the remarkable generosity and reciprocity of our community. 

The reciprocal learning within the Alliance network has also had a significant impact on women. For example, in 2020, 43 Alliance members reported collectively serving 67 million women customers, with $146 billion in deposits held and $91 billion in credit. (This significantly underestimates our impact because not all members are able to report sex-disaggregated performance data yet). 

In addition, Alliance members are incredible role models in their respective markets, including NatWest’s national leadership role in the UK’s Investing in Women Code; HBL Pakistan’s groundbreaking gender diversity and inclusion efforts; members’ incredible work breaking stereotypes; and Alliance Hack 2021 winner LXME’s first-of-its-kind investment platform for women in India—among many more great examples. 

These commercially driven and sustainable approaches to women’s full financial inclusion give us the gravitas to influence the wider ecosystem. This is apparent in our work to build the supply of gender data on access and use of financial services in six emerging markets through our leadership on Data 2X’s Women’s Financial Inclusion Data (WFID) partnership; our work to advance gender intelligence in fintech alongside important contributors to the the Alliance Hack; and our constant collaboration with our IFI/DFI partners.

We are proud of our knowledge products built from member know-how, such as the “How-To Guide for Becoming Employer of Choice for Women” and our field-defining research in 2020 and 2021 on creating a gender-intelligent fintech sector. With these having been downloaded more than 2.5 thousand times, and the Alliance Hack winning the Impact Hackathon award at APIX’s inaugural Oxygen awards last month, we’re seeing this thought leadership reverberate widely across the sector.

But above all, we are most proud of our members and want many more to join us. To find out more about qualifying for membership, please look here.