How Can Data Help Close Gaps in Women’s Financial Inclusion? Lessons from Rwanda

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Women's financial inclusion is advancing, but gaps remain. The World Bank's Global Findex 2025 reveals that 77% of women globally now hold a financial account, yet in some low- and middle-income countries, women are still up to 30 percentage points less likely to own one than men. So, what's driving this persistent divide, and how do we close it?

In our last episode, we looked at some of the barriers nano women entrepreneurs face and potential solutions. This time, we turn to the power of data. Gender-disaggregated data gives regulators and financial service providers the insight needed to design products and policies that truly serve women. In this episode, we explore how Rwanda is leading the way using smarter data collection to build a more inclusive and equitable financial system for women.

Featured Voices 

• Dr. Moise Bigirimana, Director of Financial Sector Development and Inclusion, National Bank of Rwanda 
• Michelle Gacinya, Strategy Lead W-MSME, Bank of Kigali
• Sabrina Mutangana, Skincare business owner, Rwanda 

Producer: Lamis Daoud, CGAP External Affairs Officer

Audio Editor and Sound Producer: Samantha Malhotra, World Bank Group Interactive Media Program 

Executive Producer: Jahda Swanborough, CGAP Communications Lead 

© CGAP/World Bank, 2026 

Special thanks to Valdete Berisha for conducting the interviews with this episode's guests on behalf of the produce.

Listen and subscribe for free on your favorite platform. To learn more, visit www.cgap.org. If you have any feedback, connect with us at podcast@cgap.org. 

Transcript 

Moise Bigirimana: When we started putting in place our electronic data warehouse, it wasn't easy to convince financial service providers that they're supposed to report granular data to us. But then as we engaged, we kept engaging them, but most importantly, when we started producing reports that they can refer to when we made the dashboard public for them to access, now they saw, oh, this is what this data can help us with. So, we can internalize this data. They can be of use to us. So, it's important that they see value in what they get from this data. It is not the central bank data. It's the data for whoever can use data to make sure that the improvement of product services policies in place takes place. 

Lamis Daoud: Women’s financial inclusion is essential to their economic empowerment, but progress hasn’t come easy. The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 shows encouraging movement: today, 77% of women worldwide have an account — just a four-point gap compared to men. But step into many low- and middle-income countries, and the divide widens quickly. In some markets, women remain up to 30 percentage points less likely to own an account. 

Why does this gap persist? And more importantly, what will it take to close it? 

Hello and welcome to this episode of Inclusive Finance Frontiers: a podcast by CGAP. I’m your host, Lamis Daoud. 

A big part of closing the gender gap comes down to something simple but powerful: better dataand smarter use of it. Data is the foundation for designing policies and products that match women’s financial realities, expand access, and strengthen their role as market participants. Regulators collect vast amounts of data from financial service providers to inform their policy and monitor their work.  

Yet, it is not common for them to collect data in forms that help answer questions such as who borrows and how, who saves or has insurance, who gets rejected for a loan, and who suffers from fraud and files complaints. When data is detailed like this — disaggregated by gender — it becomes a spotlight, exposing frictions that would otherwise stay hidden. 

In this episode, we travel to Rwanda, where a national effort to collect and use gender-disaggregated data is reshaping how policymakers and financial institutions serve women. As a result, this national effort is beginning to see how smarter data can pave the way toward more inclusive, equitable, and resilient financial systems. 

Our first stop is at the National Bank of Rwanda, the country’s central bank, which has been building a very advanced data infrastructure. We spoke with Dr. Moise Bigirimana, Director of Financial Sector Development and Inclusion, to learn more about this data infrastructure.  

Moise Bigirimana: The central bank has put in place a Sup-tech solution that helps in collecting granular data from all the regulated institutions. That is called electronic data warehouse. This system helps collecting from banks, from insurance companies, from microfinance institutions, from all the regulated institutions, including mobile money providers. And the system has the ability of getting updated reports on a daily basis.  

Lamis Daoud: This effort began back in 2017. Since then, the National Bank has partnered closely with financial institutions — not only to collect the data, but to strengthen the systems behind it. Today, that investment is starting to pay off. 

Moise Bigirimana: As of this year, our financial inclusion dashboard has been made public, and I think it's among the first dashboard that can get updated on a weekly basis. And that measures the level of financial inclusion at country level, disaggregated by gender, by age, by location, by type of institution, and by other different aggregators. One of the use cases that we have got from this as a result of having gender segregated data is the design of guidelines to deepen women financial inclusion. Because using the data be surprise side data and demand side data, we have seen consistent gender. And so, we developed guidelines to financial service providers that they're currently using and that are guiding them on how to design the right products for women, how to educate financial literacy for women, how to design internal policies that support women. at the national level, we've been able to set targets in the national strategy. And we have clear targets for women and for men. So, gender segregated data not only informs us in developing strategies and policies at national level, but also, they inform financial service providers on designing specific products for women. And we have seen this happening in our market. 

Lamis Daoud: But how does all this data actually translate into gender-smart products? That’s where financial institutions come in. 

Michelle Gacinya is the Strategy Lead of Women micro, small and medium enterprises from Bank of Kigali, one of the financial institutions actively collecting and using gender-disaggregated data in the country. We spoke with Michelle about how Bank of Kigali is using the financial inclusion data dashboard.  

Michelle Gacinya: It gives us good insights to know how we are performing. There are opportunities that we need to tap into to know where we are not doing well, where we can improve, and also to somehow understand the entire ecosystem, how we are performing. We also want to use it to benchmark against our competition to know how we are doing. And we also use this data to come up with products that suits the demands of women. 

Lamis Daoud: But Moise tells us that getting the financial service providers on board was difficult at first.  

Moise Bigirimana: When we started putting in place our electronic data warehouse, it wasn't easy to convince financial service providers that they're supposed to report granular data to us. But then as we engaged, we kept engaging them, but most importantly, when we started producing reports that they can refer to when we made the dashboard public for them to access, now they saw, oh, this is what this data can help us with. So, we can internalize this data. They can be of use to us. So, it's important that they see value in what they get from this data. It is not the central bank data. It's the data for whoever can use data to make sure that the improvement of product services policies in place takes place. 

Lamis Daoud: And Michelle agrees. It didn’t take long for Bank of Kigali to see the value in collecting and reporting this data.  

Michelle Gacinya: Statistics tell us that women are very big percentage of the Rwandan population. Women have a lot of registered businesses. So, it's a big segment of a population that is a big potential for business that is still underserved. So that itself is an incentive. We want to look into that and tap into that opportunity. The other incentive would be in accessing concessional funds, you want to work with partners. People who are in the same space who are working on women financial inclusion. And also being compliant. It's important that we work towards perfecting our data and keeping the compliance. 

Lamis Daoud: Of course, collecting high-quality data isn’t straightforward. Requirements evolve, customer information changes, and institutions have to keep up, often while juggling competing priorities. 

Michelle Gacinya: We have gaps at data capturing when we are onboarding customers. The requirement for gender was not there a few years ago. We now need it. So, we have a gap in there. And then there are also issues around data accuracy and completeness. Other challenges around the staff, understanding the frontline staff, they may not fully appreciate the importance of the capturing of this data accurately. Other challenges would be around resources. Because of these gaps, we need to continuously update, clean up our data to make sure we have accurate data. You'll find the people who are supposed to do it have other roles. If you need to train them, they're already on the job. You need to get them out of work. 

Lamis Daoud: And while challenges remain, Michelle sees a clear role for the central bank in pushing the ecosystem forward—from standardizing reporting templates to incentivizing institutions that serve women well. 

Michelle Gacinya: The National Bank does a lot to support the financial sector. I would say they'll still keep on doing the good work they're doing. Particularly they could have templates of gender disaggregated data reporting. They could also support us with the technical assistance trainings, forums for collaborations between the different players in the financial sector. They could also incentivize if, say, the reserve ratios, if a bank is doing well, they're serving women, they have the numbers, they can as well maybe adjust the reserve ratios and allow us to learn more. 

Lamis Daoud: But the story doesn’t end with institutions. The real impact comes when data-informed products touch the lives of women, women like Sabrina Mutangana. Sabrina runs a skincare business and lives with her grandparents. What started as a side project when she was still in school slowly grew into a real enterprise. 

Sabrina Mutangana: At that time, it was more of a hobby, but really seriously getting into it was, it's coming to four years now and currently my main source of income is Bank of Kigali loan. 

Lamis Daoud: After completing training on skincare, she began offering skincare consultations as well as skincare products.  

Sabrina Mutangana: You're not just buying something, it looks nice or you've seen it online, you actually buying what's, what's ideal for your skin type. And we also do delivery. If you don't want to come here, we have a presence online where you can order, and then we have a delivery person who can bring the product to you. 

Lamis Daoud: But growth required capital — and like many young women entrepreneurs, Sabrina worried whether a bank would even consider her. 

Sabrina Mutangana: It's my second time acquiring the same loan. The first time was last year. t's the woman stock loan. I was attracted to the loan because it's zero collateral. Before that, I didn't think I knew that I couldn't approach a bank without any assets or security that I could show. And what they needed from me was things I had already had at hand. Stuff like my RDB business registration certificates, that's something that's easy to get in Rwanda. As long as you have a business that's running, you can acquire it. And I believe it's, it's free. I thought it would be a bit more harder, but it was easy to work with a bank. It was my first time working with a financial institution. 

Lamis Daoud: For Sabrina, the experience was eye-opening. She learned what was possible when financial products are designed with women’s realities in mind — and how much further banks could go by recognizing how many entrepreneurs rely heavily on mobile money rather than traditional bank accounts. 

Sabrina Mutangana: I know that my peers and people in similar businesses as mine, they might not have, for instance, a bank account. They might not be keeping their money in a bank yet. They're making sales and they're using other means such as mobile money, which is really coming up right now. Even for myself. We still see a lot of customers using mobile money as a main way to make payments. So maybe instead of banks, financial institutions asking us for our bank statements, they could also consider other things like mobile money where you'd be shocked. That's where actually most of the transactions are happening.  

Lamis Daoud: Sabrina’s story is a reminder of why gender-disaggregated data matters. It helps institutions understand patterns they might otherwise miss — and opens doors for women who’ve long been excluded from formal finance. Because ultimately, data isn’t the goal. Better evidence, better decisions, better products, and better outcomes are. On its own, data can’t paint the full picture. But when combined with good analysis, commitment to good outcomes and customer voices, it creates a 360-degree view — one that is essential for meaningful, lasting change. 

That’s the end of our podcast today. Thank you so much to Moise, Michelle, and Sabrina for speaking to us. 

And of course, thank YOU, for joining us for this episode of Inclusive Finance Frontiers, a podcast by CGAP. I’m your host, Lamis Daoud.  

For more information on our work in inclusive finance and other topics, please visit our website at cgap.org.   

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