This month brought exciting news from across our network, including the City Bank’s women-focused salesforce training in Bangladesh, Banco Pichincha’s issuance of Ecuador’s first-ever social gender bond, and NatWest’s partnership with Meta to support women entrepreneurs.
City Bank:
City Bank set up dedicated service desks for City Alo in 60 branches across Bangladesh with an Electronic Queue Management system to minimize women’s wait time. Furthering its efforts to serve more women, City Bank trained 344 employees from branches and the direct sales team on the products, value proposition and key performance indicators for City Alo, its women-centered offering.
City Alo also held a women entrepreneur’s fair with stalls showcasing the 100+ participants who were trainees in its recent women entrepreneurship training, which enabled participants to earn BDT 14 lacs in total sales (equivalent to USD $16,000).
Banco Pichincha:
Banco Pichincha has partnered with IFC and IDB Invest to issue the first social gender bond in Ecuador, which will go towards financing for more than 10,000 women who own or lead small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The $50 million bond principal, along with another $50 million of investment made by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), amounts to $100 million and has a term of five years; Pichincha hopes to place a second $100 million tranche as a follow-on issuance in the future. The deal is also supported by the Women Entrepreneurs Financing Initiative (We-Fi).
NatWest Group:
NatWest partnered with Meta (formerly Facebook) to offer financial readiness training and other supports to women business owners on Meta’s #SheMeansBusiness platform. NatWest and Meta also launched a competition to offer 50 women entrepreneurs the chance to win Meta advertising credits, 1:1 digital mentorship and support to build a creative advertising campaign, as well as NatWest coaching and peer-to-peer sessions. Judges will be looking for women who go above and beyond to achieve in business, and they’ll announce winners in June.