Implementing Gender-Smart Strategies: A Guide for Financial Providers

Women are the most underserved demographic in financial services. Despite evidence demonstrating the business case for focusing on women’s markets and their tendency to generally save more, repay loans reliably, demonstrate higher loyalty, and act as strong brand ambassadors—making them valuable clients—financial institutions often neglect their specific needs.

This contradiction arises because financial institutions tend to view financial products and services as “gender neutral.” This perspective frequently ignores that women constitute a distinct market segment with unique needs and preferences. Additionally, social gender norms contribute to conscious and unconscious biases deeply rooted in cultural stereotypes and institutional practices. These biases influence everything from product design to organizational structures.  

As a result, women are systematically overlooked by financial institutions, facing significant barriers that limit their autonomy, as well as their financial and economic potential. 

A new approach to women’s financial inclusion

In light of this context, CGAP recently published guidelines that financial institutions can follow to adopt a more intentional strategy towards the financial inclusion of women. The guide represents an innovative approach to understanding and addressing women’s financial inclusion. It emphasizes the significance of change management and gender equality within financial institutions to foster sustainable, long-term changes in the market and improve women’s financial inclusion. It aims to transform how financial institutions approach women by not only developing appropriate products but also enhancing women’s representation and ensuring equal opportunities within organizations.

The guide is part of CGAP’s new framework toward increasing women’s financial inclusion, which emphasizes the importance of comprehensive, whole-of-market interventions. The guidelines are the result of a collaboration between CGAP, the IFC, the World Bank, Mexico’s Ministry of Finance, and the Interinstitutional Committee for Gender Equality in Financial Institutions (CIIGEF). After identifying the gaps in women’s financial inclusion in Mexico and exploring potential solutions to influence the market positively, CIIGEF requested technical assistance to provide financial institutions with actionable guidelines to kick-start or strengthen their strategies for promoting women’s financial inclusion.  

Our findings in Mexico are not unique. Similar patterns of gendered social norms and institutional reluctance are observed in numerous markets worldwide. Therefore, we have developed these global guidelines to support financial services providers committed to creating more inclusive financial markets in their respective countries.  

Ten guidelines for financial institutions to adopt a gender perspective

Adopting a gender perspective involves a strategic and intentional commitment to addressing inequalities. To effectively integrate this perspective, financial institutions must proactively identify, acknowledge, and address these norms and biases within their organizations and with their clients. This requires adopting gender-sensitive practices, ensuring equal opportunities in the workforce, increasing women’s participation in leadership and decision-making positions, and fostering a culture of gender equality within the organization. This approach will lead to a portfolio of products that better serve women and align with the institution’s overall strategy.  

To achieve this goal, institutions can follow a structured approach that can be summarized in five steps:  

The guide provides more details on addressing women's financial inclusion with interventions at three levels within an institution, as shown below. The document also includes a self-assessment tool that serves as a roadmap to assist financial institutions in identifying their strengths and weaknesses in these areas. Lastly, it includes an extensive list of toolkits that can be used to guide the implementation of each of the action items comprised within each guideline.  

The board, at the highest level of the institution, plays a crucial role in setting the tone for gender mainstreaming. It must mandate and support a strategy that mainstreams gender in the institution (Guideline 1).

The management—the second level of action—should be tasked with developing and implementing a gender strategy, which will address all necessary changes within the institution (Guidelines 2 and 3). It is imperative to recognize that this strategy should be treated as a business decision due to its significant potential, not just as part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies. The perception of serving women as a charitable gesture or a feel-good activity is not effective and does not lead to lasting change.  

Staff, communications, and product management are the targets of the third level of actions. Regarding staff, gender mainstreaming means providing women with the same opportunities as men for job access and ensuring appropriate representation of women across all functions. It also entails gender sensitization and building the capacity of the entire workforce to eliminate biases and stereotypes, internally and externally (Guidelines 4 and 5). Likewise, all communications should be reviewed to ensure inclusivity and avoid reinforcing biases (Guideline 6).  

Lastly, organizational changes must lead to products that better address women's needs and preferences (Guidelines 7-10). These last set of guidelines provide business teams with tools and recommendations to:  

1. Better understand women's product demands.  
2. Tailor products to meet these demands while aligning with the overall business strategy.  
3. Implement changes to delivery and service channels that enhance the experiences of female clients.
4. Establish strategic partnerships that enable financial institutions to serve specific segments of women more effectively or offer services that women value. 

Of course, no good effort will be fully recognized without proper impact evaluation. Alongside the self-assessment tool, which institutions can use periodically to track progress, the guide also offers key indicators that can be integrated into an organization’s metrics.  

Turning theory into action requires deliberate commitment from financial institutions

Closing the gender gap in financial services is a complex challenge. However, as women increasingly assume roles as decision-makers, workers, and entrepreneurs, providing a gender-smart portfolio of products and services becomes a compelling business strategy.  

CGAP's new framework and country initiatives, such as CIIGEF, represent commendable efforts that have offered early insights into how a holistic market approach, where public authorities, industry organizations, and support entities collaborate, can enhance the impact of financial institutions in advancing women's financial inclusion.  

We aspire for this guide to serve as a roadmap for institutions ready to take on the challenge of closing the gap in women's financial inclusion once and for all.