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Bank on Her: The Smart Solution for Financial Inclusion

innovations / volume 10, number 1-2 © 2015 Mary Ellen Iskenderian The World Bank released a startling piece of news this spring in its latest Global Findex database report: since 2011, 700 million people worldwide have acquired bank accounts. In fact, access to bank accounts grew more in the past few years than in the past few decades—a rapid and dramatic change usually unheard of in development circles. The growth in access to vaccines and bed nets that prevent malaria, for instance, does not even come close. Despite these impressive gains, however, the gender gap in financial inclusion persists. While millions more men now have access to formal financial services, millions of women—particularly low-income women—have been left behind. As of 2014, 65 percent of men worldwide had a bank account, compared to 58 percent of women. Although this reflects a significant increase from 2011, when 54 percent of men and 47 percent of women had an account, the gender gap stands at nine percentage points in the developing world and seven points globally.1 The gap is even wider in some regions; it stands at 18 percent in South Asia, and in the Middle East, men are twice as likely as women to have an account. The efforts made by public, private, and philanthropic actors to increase financial inclusion over the past few years have clearly paid off, largely because of a commitment to reaching the unbanked through innovative, user-friendly digital financial services. Now it is time to apply those solutions—both the technological tools and the political and sociocultural strategies—to the specific needs of half of the world’s population that has largely been left out: women. There is every reason to believe that, if key players turn their attention to closing this gender gap, the results will be no less impressive than other efforts to increase financial inclusion. Why is raising the bar on financial inclusion worth the effort? Expanding financial inclusion has a profound impact on overall economic growth and community development. At the macro level, expanding financial inclusion increases GDP growth and results in greater labor force participation; at the micro level, it leads to a significant increase in financial capability and in the social stability of families and individuals. Governments and global development organizations have heightened their focus on