WFID Community of Champions

The Women’s Financial Inclusion Data (WFID) Community of Champions consists of national regulators and key stakeholders dedicated to enhancing women’s financial inclusion in their countries through improved data collection, analysis, and utilization.

2026 Convenings

Creating Enabling Regulatory Environments for Inclusive Digital Financial Services

October 22, 2026

This session explored how inclusive neobanks and fintechs are using data to reach women and small businesses that traditional lenders overlook, and what regulators can do to help them scale. We heard from Josam Watson of Tyme Group, whose GoTyme Bank in the Philippines has grown to more than 11.5 million customers and adds about half a million each month, and from Paula Franco, founder of EquiPass and former financial inclusion group lead at the Financial Superintendency of Colombia. EquiPass is building credit passports for women-led MSMEs on an open finance framework. Their insights included:

Transaction data opens credit to the thin-file majority. Only about 30% of Filipinos have credit bureau records. GoTyme has attracted customers from the larger under-served population––and found a majority-women user base––with a digital banking model that starts with low-cost accounts, opened in under five minutes at kiosks in more than 800 supermarket locations. It then uses their transaction behavior to pre-qualify them for flexible loans, salary loans, and merchant cash advances repaid as a share of daily sales. Small, contained “foundational tests” let the bank learn about new segments before scaling.
Putting gender data in consumers’ hands creates market pull. Colombia already publishes sex-disaggregated lending data by institution, available through an API, yet as Paula noted, few lenders are actually using it. EquiPass aims to get more out of available data by putting it in the hands of consumers: letting women combine their open finance records with public data to compare lenders and choose the fairest offer.
Regulation can unlock inclusive growth. Speakers pointed to proportionate digital bank licensing, instant payment rails, eKYC, cloud adoption, and clear, revocable, time-bound open finance consent standards as key enablers. Their asks for regulators: assess digital lenders on risk-adjusted margins rather than industry averages, adopt a consistent definition of women-owned and women-led enterprises, and advance open banking.

Innovations in Gender Data Reporting: Colombia and Mexico

April 29, 2026

This session explored how financial regulators are advancing the collection, public reporting, and use of sex-disaggregated data to close persistent gender gaps in financial services, with presentations from the Financial Superintendency of Colombia and CNBV Mexico. Both have longstanding policies to collect and report gender-disaggregated data from financial services providers. As they continue to evolve what data they collect and how they leverage it, the speakers shared several cutting-edge use cases:

Per-institution transparency as a market lever. Unlike most national regulators, which publish market-level data, Colombia and Mexico publish portfolio-level data per financial institution, including loans, deposits, rates, and gender splits. They see this disclosure as a soft-power lever: visible rankings like “most inclusive bank for women” can move consumer behavior.
A consumer-facing data ecosystem. Colombia has built a distinctive public rate-comparison portal—currently covering savings accounts, credit cards, and CDTs—that lets consumers enter their attributes and compare products across all banks, part of a single data ecosystem built to serve policymakers, institutions, and consumers alike.
Deeper insights unlock new regulatory levers. Speakers demonstrated how, as gender data insights deepen, more regulatory levers emerge. Mexico’s 2021 reduction of loan-loss provisions for loans to women and Colombia’s alternative credit scoring sandbox for financial services providers are excellent examples.

Dashboards Updates: Expanding the Picture of Women’s Financial Inclusion in Bangladesh and Uganda

July 9, 2026

This session explored how regulators are expanding gender data dashboards beyond bank account access to build a fuller picture of women’s financial inclusion (WFI). We heard from Bangladesh Bank, which recently integrated insurance and capital markets data into its national dashboard, and the Bank of Uganda, which has added remittances data into its own. The speakers shared several insights gleaned as they broaden the lens to see a fuller picture of women’s financial inclusion:

Integrating new data is a cross-regulator effort. Starting in January 2024, Uganda widened remittances reporting beyond banks and money remitters to payment service providers and forex bureaus, redesigning its template from 8–10 variables to more than 50 indicators. Bangladesh added insurance and capital markets—both regulated outside the central bank—through new interagency data-sharing agreements, with insurance integration alone running from 2022 to 2026.
New data upends assumptions. Uganda’s more granular reporting surfaced $1 billion in previously un-captured remittance inflows, raising the recorded annual total from $1.5 to $2.5 billion, with mobile money overtaking cash as the leading channel. It also and showed the female share of receivers rising from 23.5% to 32.4%. In Bangladesh, insurance reversed the usual pattern seen in banking: women hold 49% of some 20 million policies (and 61% of micro-insurance), while capital markets was male-dominated as expected, with women holding just 24% of 1.2 million beneficiary-owner accounts.
A fuller picture informs better policy. These are likely among the first gender-disaggregated remittances, insurance, and capital markets dashboards anywhere. By extending beyond banking data, regulators can test assumptions, make hidden gaps visible, and gain concrete levers to move from partial inclusion toward the full financial enablement of women.

Learning Journey

Established in 2022 as part of the Alliance’s leadership of the Women’s Financial Inclusion Data partnership, the WFID Community of Champions was created in response to national regulators’ interest in learning how their peers leverage gender data to boost women’s financial inclusion. During meetings, regulators and policymakers share best practices and lessons learned in improving data usage to achieve women’s full financial inclusion. Focus areas include building gender data awareness, aggregating and visualizing data for actionable insights, and leveraging data to design evidence-based policies that address key barriers and gaps.

Time commitment

The Community of Champions meets three times annually, twice online and once in person.

Why join?

Financial sector regulators are increasingly committed to using supply-side gender data to drive women’s economic growth. The WFID Community of Champions provides a platforms for regulators across countries to connect and share challenges and best practices in this work. Through topical meetings covering a range of topics, regulators stay updated on the latest innovations in women’s financial inclusion strategies and learn from the real-world experiences of peers around the globe.

Who attends

The WFID Community of Champions includes financial inclusion and data leaders from central banks and other national regulators and institutions, in countries including Bangladesh, Colombia, Chile, Egypt, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Peru.

Interested in joining? Email peerlearning@financialallianceforwomen.org.

More Resources

The Gender Data Playbook for Women’s Financial Inclusion

InBrief: Building a National Gender Data Dashboard