When CGAP launched its collective action project on women's financial inclusion (WFI) in Morocco, our hypothesis was straightforward: advancing WFI is too complex for any single actor to tackle alone. What was needed was a mechanism to ensure individual actions could build on one another, generating the kind of systemic change that no financial service provider (FSP), ministry, or donor could produce in isolation. Coordination and synergies were our mission.
We were not wrong in our hypothesis. If anything, we had underestimated the potential of collective action.
When we began building the case for a WFI coalition in 2025, many financial institutions had deprioritized women clients, citing weak demand and an unfavorable environment. This was exacerbated by women's very low participation in the labor market, below 20% and declining. As the coalition took shape, we identified five mechanisms through which collective action created value. Rather than unfolding in a linear sequence, these mechanisms emerged and reinforced one another throughout the coalition's development and launch, revealing a broader role for collective action than we had originally anticipated.
The WFI coalition launched in February 2026, co-chaired by Bank Al-Maghrib and the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Within a few months, 21 FSPs representing over 90% of the market were allocating resources to better serve women. The mindset shift is already visible.
Those involved in the coalition—from regulators and financial institutions to the CGAP team—were surprised by how quickly the coalition began to drive change. What made this coalition work so quickly? The coordination role we had initially envisioned turned out to be premature: there was not much to coordinate yet. What drove early results was something more fundamental. That was the collective structure itself, which enabled actions no single institution could have taken alone. Each of the five mechanisms below emerged from practice, and each surprised us.
1. Giving institutions a trusted sounding board
The coalition acts as a shared help desk, keeping operational staff from institutions in frequent, informal contact with expertise, allowing diagnostic conversations to happen before questions are even fully formed. Unlike traditional technical assistance, which often begins once an institution already knows what it needs, the coalition facilitator helps teams identify problems, test ideas, and determine where to start.
By embedding this resource across institutions, the coalition provides a cost-effective advisor, connector, and sounding board. This matters especially for deprioritized topics like WFI in Morocco, where budget is limited, and proof points are required before new investment is approved.
For example, a large Moroccan bank shared a draft questionnaire for a women's client segment with the coalition facilitator, not to commission a formal review, but to test its thinking and learn what had worked elsewhere. The hour-long exchange delivered immediate value that a traditional technical assistance model would be unlikely to provide.
2. Turning research into something institutions use
There is no shortage of literature on financial inclusion. The real challenge is making it relevant to practitioners. Coalitions provide a structured channel for researchers to test and refine findings, ensuring that research responds to the questions practitioners are actually asking.
In Morocco, the coalition commissioned qualitative research on low-income women that was used to build client personas. Two years ago, institutions saw little market potential in this segment. Today, after the research was shared and worked through collectively, more than 10 FSPs are participating in a human-centered design lab, shifting the conversation from "we cannot act until the broader environment changes" to "how do we meet women where they are?"
What gave the research its impact was the process around it. Because the coalition facilitator is already in regular contact with member institutions, findings could be tested informally, sense-checked across several institutions in a single day, and refined in direct response to practitioners' doubts and questions. That iterative loop is what turns a research output into something with enough institutional relevance to drive action.
3. Turning competition into momentum
Having competitors in the same room is, at first glance, a disincentive rather than an attraction. It requires careful design – the coalition has clear protocols to protect the confidentiality of each institution's strategy and service offer.
But the competitive dynamic itself can be a powerful driver. When sector leaders are visibly engaged, sitting on the sidelines starts to feel like a strategic risk. One institution initially participated quietly, requesting no support and sharing no materials. Yet it attended every session, and as the previously mentioned Design Lab progressed, it sent more participants. By the time the analysis phase began, that institution had conducted the most client interviews and generated some of the richest insights.
Fear of missing out is only part of the story. A more subtle but equally powerful dynamic is the reassurance that comes from moving together. Institutions are not taking risks alone or investing in innovations that competitors can simply copy. A shared learning framework distributes that risk, helping hesitant institutions shift from observing to acting.
4. Grounding policy dialogue in operational reality
National financial inclusion working groups typically gather broad views on the regulatory environment, rather than evidence from institutions actively trying to bring specific products to market. This can produce technically sound reforms with limited real-world impact.
Morocco's moveable asset registry is a cautionary example. It was created as a significant policy reform designed to boost lending to women with limited collateral but had limited market impact in practice – possibly because the underlying demand was not grounded in concrete operational experience.
Collective action changes this by making implementation the basis for policy dialogue. In the payments sector, calls to reform agent-network regulations gained traction only when providers brought field evidence showing precisely which requirements prevented them from recruiting agents in low-income communities. Without that operational grounding, the same argument had gone nowhere for years.
With 21 FSPs simultaneously working through their own WFI action plans, the coalition organizes this feedback loop at scale. Operational constraints surface faster, are cross-validated across institutions, and reach regulators as a coherent, evidence-based reform agenda rather than a wish list.
5. Becoming the strategic compass for the ecosystem
With institutions representing over 90% of the sector in the room, the coalition holds something uniquely valuable: a real-time view of what is actually happening on WFI across Morocco. This directly addresses a persistent problem. Donor and government programs tend to remain limited in geographic reach and duration, sometimes replicating existing efforts while leaving important gaps unaddressed.
By bringing every major FSP to the table, the coalition becomes a natural starting point for any new initiative. It is able to identify which institutions already serve a particular region or segment, where coverage is thin, and where investment would add the most value. Because FSPs are the end conduit of every WFI program in the country, their collective presence makes this intelligence both comprehensive and continuously updated.
In building a coordination platform, we have ended up creating something closer to a living knowledge and action infrastructure. The value of collective action is not just what it coordinates. The value is what it makes possible: actions that no individual actor, working alone, would have imagined or dared to attempt.
This piece is part of a broader CGAP effort to document and share lessons across countries on what it takes to make collective action for women’s financial inclusion work in practice.
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