The Gender-Inclusive SME Banking Toolkit is a four-part learning journey designed to help you move from understanding the market to action. Built on the INVEST Toolkit, it combines practical tools and frameworks to help you:
- Assess the SME market
- Refine your segmentation
- Evaluate your institution’s capabilities and strengthen your business case
- Track your program’s performance
Through a structured peer-learning approach, you will apply these tools step-by-step to your own institution, turning learning into practical insights, decisions and actions.
The program is delivered by the developers of the INVEST Toolkit from ConsumerCentriX, alongside Women’s Markets expert practitioners from the Financial Alliance for Women. Participants will have the opportunity to exchange experiences and learn from fellow SME and Women’s Markets leads from the Alliance’s global network of financial institutions.
Why SMEs and Why Now
Small and Medium Enterprises are at the heart of your business and a key part of your growth strategy.
Yet understanding the diversity of these businesses, clustering them into meaningful segments and translating that understanding into a compelling proposition for each segment can be challenging. This is especially the case for Women owned and /or led Small and Medium Enterprises (WSMEs).
Building a successful WSME strategy starts with knowing them better. Deepening your understanding of their needs and priorities, knowing how to effectively segment and serve them, and understanding what is the business case for doing so, are critical to any effective WSME strategy.
$5.7T: Underserved SMEs represent an estimated $5.7 trillion annual financing gap in emerging economies, the single largest opportunity most banks are still leaving on the table.
37%: Within that gap, women-owned and -led SMEs are an outsized part of the opportunity: Women own an estimated 37% of formal SMEs and reinvest up to 90% of their income into their households and communities, yet remain the most underserved in SME lending today.
Why Attend
This series will be of interest if you are looking to:
- Reassess your WSME market and ground your strategy in relevant, up-to-date data
- Apply a practical, proven approach to segmenting Women owned/led SMEs
- Build or refresh your institution’s WSME business case using bespoke tools
- Define the right KPIs to track progress and results over time
- Learn from peer practitioners through real-world use cases, interactive discussions, and knowledge sharing
Who Should Attend
Each member institution may nominate two participants, ideally the SME Banking lead alongside the Women’s Markets lead, to encourage collaboration and application of the tools within the institution. The program is particularly relevant for:
- SME Banking team
- Women’s Markets / WSME Banking Leads
- Strategy and Business Development teams.
Time Commitment
Through a hybrid learning path combining online self-paced learning modules with weekly live sessions, you will be able to access tools and develop skills on your own time as well as meet virtually as a group to gain insights and engage with peer practitioners.
Live Sessions: Thursdays, 2:30 – 4:00 PM London time, Oct 29 – Nov 19
Self-Paced: About 90 minutes per week on the Alliance learning platform
Languages
The live webinars will have live interpretation services from English to Spanish and French. The online course and material are in English, only.
Join the Program
This program in its first edition is exclusive to Financial Alliance for Women members, with includes dedicated follow-up support throughout. Spaces are limited, so early nomination is recommended.