In June, FMO hosted and supported the GBA All-Stars Academy on women financing. GBA (Global Banking Alliance for Women) is the leading international consortium of financial institutions and other organizations interested in building women’s wealth worldwide. The academy program was set up to increase the capabilities of the financial services community to target women as a distinct market.
Peer learning is powerful
FMO is increasingly active in the field of financing for women. One aspect of our role is to highlight and show the business case to those financial institutions that we work with and that we want to work with in the future. The GBA All Star’s Academy was a perfect way for us to do so, and one of the key reasons for this is that the course leaders were bankers who have developed and launched financial products for women in their banks. All of the cases, examples, data and anecdotes were genuine and first hand.
Is financing for women truly demand driven?
Investing and financing with a gender lens has great potential to create economic and social impact by increasing women’s access to finance, increasing their wealth, health and livelihoods, and therefore that of their families. It also has other associated benefits such as raising awareness of gender issues, promoting gender diversity in the workplace, and stimulating the creation of products and services that contribute to improving the lives of women and girls.
The demand for women oriented financial products exists. There remains a gap in the delivery of financial services, both in terms of access and service quality, to women relative to men. There are around 7 million women-owned SMEs in the formal sector in the developing world, of which 70% are unserved or underserved by financial institutions. This amounts to a financing gap of $285 billion (Goldman Sachs, 2014).
Interest from Costa Rica to Schotland
One of the great things about the GBA All-Stars Academy was the diversity of participants, because we were joined in the Hague by Banco BAC from Costa Rica, Bai Tushum from Kyrgyzstan, KCB from Burundi, City Bank from Bangladesh and a number of others from all around the globe. It might also be surprising to hear that the Royal Bank of Scotland attended the academy and has already made a lot of progress and carved a niche in the British market with its focus on women.
Learning opportunity for FMO
One of the things that I am proud of FMO for is its willingness to listen and learn from its clients and its network. By inviting people to the Netherlands and welcoming them into our offices, we create the opportunity for dialogue and learning for not only our partners, but also our own colleagues and partners. That’s how you begin to build something more meaningful than just a relationship based on financial transactions.
Gatherings in The Hague's Mauritshuis
The mix of people from all around the world were brought together in the Hague, at the beautiful Mauritshuis.
We were very pleased that colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attended the half-day masterclass. Gender is one of the key themes for Dutch international cooperation, and FMO is certainly glad of the support we have had from DGIS and the Governmental task force on Gender in being a sounding board for our strategy.
Naturally as a development bank our focus is on the economic empowerment of women, but we see this a key pillar in the aims of Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
What's next?
As a result of the Academy a number of the attending banks have reach out to FMO for support in helping them to better serve their female clients. With Banco BAC in Costa Rica we have started a Capacity Development project to help them develop training courses for their female entrepreneur clients, using blended learning (i.e. online and face-to-face). We are also investigating a number of financing opportunities with these banks. Finally, we have a partnership with IFC and Goldman Sachs Foundation, and we will be leveraging this to make sure that more women and women owned businesses have access to capital. Scale is really important here given the size of the opportunity.
Personal note
I am often asked: why do we always refer to gender, and not just say women? It’s true to say that the impact we are looking for is on women and girls, but this is only a part of the picture. By referring to gender, we are making it clear that we are looking at how, over time, culture and society has created norms, conferred responsibilities and built expectations of how men and women, boys and girls, act and play their roles. By referring to gender, we bring both men and women into the equation, and this is the starting point for change. I was glad that the All Stars was attended by both men and women, because gender is not just an issue for women.
Read more about the GBA all-stars academy here