WFID Partnership Shares Latest Updates on Advancement of Gender Data

Monday 13th August 2018

As a group of stakeholders committed to closing the gender gap in financial inclusion, GBA, Data2X, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), IFC, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) work together in the Women’s Financial Inclusion Data (WFID) partnership to increase awareness about the importance of sex-disaggregated financial services data. On July 26^th, the Partnership held its first technical workshop in Washington, D.C., for an in-depth sharing of partners’ key gender data initiatives to align strategies and promote an ecosystem approach to advancing the collection and use of sex-disaggregated financial services data globally.

During the meeting, partners highlighted their current work on sex-disaggregated financial services data and discussed future synergies. AFI shared an overview of its toolkit on sex-disaggregated data for central banks and presented updates from the work of its members the Central Bank of Egypt and the Bank of Zambia – which are currently developing frameworks for collecting sex-disaggregated data. Lessons learned from these countries will be profiled in future Partnership case studies.

IDB Invest, the private sector arm of the IDB, discussed its efforts to integrate gender data into its FINLAC dataset, which is an extensive database with information from more than 3,000 financial institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. IFC presented an overview of the latest update of its MSME Finance Gap Survey– a global assessment of the number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the world, and their potential demand for finance. The survey highlights the significant gender gap in finance for MSMEs globally. The IMF shared how it is mainstreaming sex-disaggregated statistics in its Financial Access Survey, the leading source of global supply-side data on access to and use of financial services by households and firms. The World Bank presented results on the global gender gap in financial services access and usage from its 2017 Findex survey.

The GBA shared its new “Global Business Case Tool for Financial Services Providers” (FSPs), which leverages these global databases to support FSP practitioners to develop a business case for serving the Women’s Market – quantifying the market opportunity and estimating an FSP’s financial benefit from strategically targeting the female economy. The GBA also shared results from its 2018 “Economics of Banking on Women” report, the only global survey that measures the performance of FSPs serving the Women’s Market.

Data2X then presented a study that focused on the issue of harmonization, with partners sharing their experiences in collecting and reporting sex-disaggregated data, and the challenges around the divergence of definitions and indicators that are currently being used across different actors. WFID partners committed to continue working in this area to reduce reporting redundancies and improve data quality.

The technical workshop ended with a commitment to continue sharing experiences and practices among the Partnership and across the sector in an effort to further build the ecosystem approach developed as part of the Partnership’s efforts to champion the collection and use of sex-disaggregated financial services data. Learn more about the Partnership’s priorities and key action areas here.