Letter from Inez: February 2024

3 Minutes Read

Spotlight on: Data Driving Inclusion

Ten years ago, with support from McKinsey & Company, we captured the attitudes of senior banking leaders towards women’s markets in our ground-breaking research report How Banks Can Profit From The Multi Trillion Dollar Female Economy.  At the time, we found that most of these leaders – from banks representing 20 percent of global banking assets – neither understood that there is a women’s market nor that there is a business case to tailor customer propositions for women. So, we set out to prove both by asking members to report each year through our Female Economy Analytics Survey (FEAS). 

With years of data now under our belt, this month, we publish the latest annual aggregate analysis in a new report, Measuring The Value Of The Female Economy: 2023 Edition. It well and truly backs the business case, revealing among other facts that women-owned small and medium enterprise (WSMEs) representation as customers, along with their credit and deposit volumes, is growing at an accelerated rate compared to other segments.

We know that sex disaggregating customer data to track these types of insights requires commitment and know-how, and the Alliance works to support financial services providers (FSPs) on both fronts. This month we are proud to offer our latest support tool called The Power Of Women’s Markets Data: A How To Guide, a quick-read resource that captures how our members approach sex disaggregating customer data in a way that others can emulate.

Widening the lens to national ecosystems, we’re currently recruiting a global Community Of Champions to support the roll-out of the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code across 20+ countries over the next two years. This prestigious community will consist of code anchors from each country – leaders from the public and private sectors ready to champion the code and trusted bodies who will aggregate the data at the national level. We will work with the community to ensure good practices are identified, codified and shared, with an aim of accelerating the on-boarding of  signatories across the entire finance ecosystem, including banks, VCs, angel investors and fintechs.

We recognize that the key to maximizing the potential of the code roll-out across so many markets will require our community of champions to work cohesively and to understand the latest best practice in supporting WMSMEs. To help facilitate this, the community will gather for four 90-minute webinars and one in-person meeting per year, over two years. This year’s meeting will take the form of a study tour to understand the UK’s Investing in Women Code, to be held at Canary Wharf, London, on June 6 – the day after our 2024 Annual Summit, to which the community are also invited, space permitting. 

This year’s Annual Summit is taking place June 4 and 5 in London, hosted by Alliance member HSBC. Throughout the very full two-day agenda, we will we have a special focus on gender intelligent fintech design. This will include showcasing the extraordinary value being brought to women’s markets by the winners of our first four annual Alliance Hackathons. These winners will be among fellow fintech founders, investors and other guests at a special dinner with the UK fintech ecosystem, hosted by Silicon Valley Bank.

It’s shaping up to be an exciting agenda this year and we encourage our members to register early to ensure plenty of time for those who need to organize UK visas. 

For those of you who missed it last Thursday, check out the recording of our latest Fintech Friday on Can AI Improve Women’s Financial Inclusion, which shared both the incredible potential and challenges of artificial intelligence.

Always on the forefront, thank you for reading this letter and thanks to our members and strategic partners without whom our work would not be possible.

In community,

Inez Murray Newsletter Signature