DBS Economics & StrategyKopi Time E056: Mary Ellen Iskenderian on digital finance for women
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, joins Kopi Time to talk about giving low-income women in the developing world access to the financial tools and resources. She begins by setting the ground for where we stand with respect to gender equity. She points out that financial inclusion means more than just having a bank account; increasingly, a better indicator is access to a smartphone, in which there remains a large gender gap. She shares her organisation’s rich insights into partnering with governments and entrepreneurs to come up with innovative, increasingly digital, gender-based solutions that lift up women and reduce inequality. She explains that the research and experience of her organisation forms the basis for providing a wide range of companies with the tools and programs needed to build gender-diverse teams. Women’s World Banking has also been involved in successful gender-lens investments; Mary Ellen shares her experience with fund raising, successful exits, and the impact of the pandemic on such investments.
Hi you're listening to Kobe time, a podcast series on markets and economies From devious group Research. I'm tomorrow. Big chief economist. Welcome to our 56 episodes.
Today we will delve into an issue very close to my heart. See I come from a family of strong women, all professionally accomplished and dedicated to doing good.
I know firsthand how women's inclusion in the
workforce and
their financial autonomy can elevate a family or even a society.
So let's talk about this issue with the foremost expert in this field.
Maryland. Eskandarian is our guest. She's a president and Ceo of Women's World Banking, a nonprofit organization devoted to giving low income women in the developing world acts to financial tools and resources they need to achieve security and prosperity.
Mary. Ellen has been with women's world banking for 15 years and leads the firm's global team based in New York and she also serves as a member of the investment committee of its to impact investment funds.
Prior to women's World Banking Maryland school for 17 years at the I. F. C. Or the International Financial Corporation Finance Corporation, which is the private sector arm of the World Bank.
She is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as a member of the women's forum of new york
and the U. N. Business and Sustainable Development Commission
mary Ellen, a warm welcome to Kobe time.
Hi timer is so great to see you. Thanks for having me.
It's our pleasure. Um Let's start with the issue of gender equity. Where do we stand and can you share with us some data from the industrial and emerging world that help us appreciate the gender gaps that exist right now?
sure. So when we talk specifically around issues of financial inclusion, um the gender gap globally is 7%. So there are
7% more men with an account in their own name than women in the developing markets. That's 9%. Now, you're probably thinking, wow, I thought things were a lot worse. That's not so bad. Some of it really has to do with the way that financial inclusion is measured. So
all that number tells you
is how many people actually have an account in their own name. It doesn't say anything about usage, it doesn't say anything about other services that are offered through that account. And it really doesn't tell you very much about probably the single biggest factor in financial inclusion today,
Which is digital financial services. So if we start to unpack those numbers a little bit, we see a much bigger gap when we start looking at cell phone ownership, for example. So the ownership of the feature phone, flip phone, that's also sort of roughly 10% globally. But since
most of the banking
approaches are really being designed for
internet enabled phones or smartphones, that's again, really where you start to see the divide, 20% gender gap in uh globally, in the emerging markets in South asia, those numbers start to creep up into a 30% gap. So 300 million fewer
phones owned by women, mobile phones, uh
smartphones owned by women than by men. And that's really the ticket to digital financial services and really the on ramp to financial inclusion. So I guess just wrapping this up
the headline numbers really don't tell you a lot about what's really going on in the in the field today.
So you would include access to cell phone almost as important an aspect of financial inclusion as having a bank account.
Absolutely. And and not again, similarly to the bank account, not just access, but really an understanding of how to use it a confidence to use it. Again, we see a real gap in men's and women's willingness to, you know, to play around, you know, women will download WhatsApp quite easily on their phones, but then they get sort of stuck on that app and they don't tend not to um, you know, to explore the rest of the internet, the rest of the functionality of the phone, whereas men are much more willing to do that. And that's a factor. Unfortunately, we see across the income spectrum for women.
Yes.
Okay, so I'm again starting from very basic. So I would ask a question that might seem a bit naive. So, forgive me for that. Which
is why is
women's financial inclusion at the heart of your organization. I mean, if you were keen on gender equity, couldn't you just advocate for legal reforms that ensure equality of access or opportunities across gender?
It's such a great question. Um, and maybe I can take a little step back and tell you a little bit about women's world banking and um, you know, where we come from. Uh so we are 42 years old this year. And the organization really um stemmed from was was incubated if you will at the first U. N. Conference on Human Rights for Women in 1976 in Mexico City
and a group of women who were there from different walks of life, different parts of the world. We're listening to all of this human rights based language and realized that if women didn't have equality of economic rights and some of that is absolutely the legal reforms that you alluded to, if they don't have
economic
equality, then that so many of those human rights really are denied them. And I think it's it's always important to remember that in 1976 in the United States, the country I'm from, uh, you know, a woman couldn't get alone in her own name without her husband's signature, she couldn't have a credit card in her own name, There was no
opportunity for her to say no, my my social Security benefits go to someone other than my husband. You know, there was a lot of constraint around women's financial equality even in the developed world at the time.
Um, and so this this movement grows 1979 were created and the original intention really was this support to women entrepreneurs. If a woman entrepreneur was denied alone, women's world banking would stand behind them as guarantor. That was the original um,
identity or identifying mission. And indeed, we did a lot of those loan guarantees in the early years.
But it was happening just as the global microfinance movement was really starting to explode. Um,
a lot of it born in your home country in in Bangladesh, but we saw also very exciting trends in in Bolivia and some of the other latin american countries. And so those two movements kind of merged in women's world banking. And so we started
in some ways as a membership organization and supporting microfinance institutions around the world that were
really committed to women's financial inclusion um, as it was understood then, which was largely access to very small loans.
But and I say we sort of stayed in that mode of membership organization for 25 years or so. But
this is where I think the story gets kind of exciting and loops back to your question as technology slowly started to really emerge as the main way that we were going to be able to reach large numbers of excluded people, both men and women.
The number of organizations and players and interested parties who really kind of wanted to get in on this game of reaching low income people, not just with credit service group services but with savings with insurance and very notably with payments. We started to see an explosion and in terms of who women's world banking
could and should be working with.
So today we've moved far beyond those microfinance origins and we work with 56 financial service providers in 31 countries, they serve a total of 69 million women and they are all over the place. There are still
some wonderful iconic microfinance institutions,
But we have about a third of our network members today are fin Tex. There are 23 full fledged commercial banks, some of them working across several markets, which is very exciting to be able to really reach women at scale. We have a payments bank, we have insurance companies, so
the plethora of players now is really so exciting and the ability to use women's access to finance
to move the dial on. So many other issues like
safe water, food security, better health, better education really makes financial inclusion such a great lever to drive change in so many other ways.
Okay, very exciting. And I'm gonna unpack some of the stuff you talked about because you know, we we need to get deeper into it. Okay, so firstly, all the initiatives you started saying that, you know in the 70s starting from loan guarantees to then partnering with microfinance corporations and now focus on the digital. So share with us
Couple of specific he initiatives for 2020 and 20, through the middle of this pandemic.
That has made you feel that, you know, if they're having a huge impact,
well, the digital, I mean, this isn't an original issue with financial inclusion. Digital has become so, so critical and has really, I think there's been a moment. I'm tremendously optimistic actually that
some of the things that we were able to achieve in terms of financial inclusion
um as a result of the pandemic, um you know, it's taken years for us to, you know, to do what we've been able to do in in a matter of months. So you saw really many governments and the regulators in those governments, not not recklessly by any means, but take on a greater willingness to look at remote account opening or the movement of government benefits payments or relief payments onto a digital platform in order to take care, take advantage of that contact lists um delivery. The need to be socially distant uh in India alone. In the 1st 22 weeks of their announcement of covid relief payments. You know, back at the beginning of the pandemic. Open 25 million bank accounts in two weeks, mostly for women. And mostly because they were only one of two countries that made a dedicated effort to
have their covid relief payments payable. Only two women
and they were working off of
decades now of research that looks at when you
put that payment, a welfare payment or even a tax credit payment into the hands of a woman. Directly. More numbers of people in the family benefit. You see real impacts on better nutrition, better health care. More kids stay in school.
So they really learned those lessons of making sure those payments can get into the hands of women.
It's
interesting really. I
have heard from some people that
the pandemic was particularly tough on women because if you have to stay at home,
uh it's almost always the women's job to look after the kids who are doing school from home and as a result, the labor force participation for women has sort of gone down both across developed and developing markets.
So yes, I mean on one hand, I fully agree with you that the acceleration and some of the digital
uh reforms that were planned for over a multiyear horizon have gotten done in the fast track manner. But when you sort of scan the horizon and you've been looking at a wide number of emerging market economies of developing economies, um do you see that digital divide play out or has it actually been conservatively not the case and women actually have been more included?
So the digital divide has, I think is pretty much or the closing of that divide in the last year has I think been a pretty much an unalloyed success. You've seen um you know, much of our work in the last year has really been
taking this tremendous opportunity of
these covid relief payments increasingly digital increasingly going to women because you saw several countries Indonesia in particular and we've done quite a bit of work there. We can talk about that. Um basically, you know, on a dime, they pivoted their largest conditional cash transfer programme, the Pick Aha program,
into a covid relief payment and that was already going to women.
But they really looked for ways to have that program also drive women's financial inclusion. So I think that has been quite positive for women,
where we're still quite concerned is exactly on the issue. You mentioned, the care burden
has always and and still does fall disproportionately hard on women. And so now as economies are beginning to open back up again, you're seeing women, it's really lagging in going back into the labor force until schools are open full time until
child care is consistently available. So that sort of outside of the digital realm that is still presenting, you know, real, real
problems with regard to inequality. Now, can can digital also be a solution to that problem? We were already starting to see pre pandemic real movement to digital commerce and many women moving their businesses online and able to reach a much larger um population with their products and services. And very, very exciting opportunities for that woman who might have that home based business to bring that online. So again, there might be a bit of a silver lining, but I don't think we should um we should be celebrating quite yet on the impact the disproportionately hard impact of the economic effects of the
the pandemic on women.
Right. I, you know, we re characterize 21 as a year of cross currents. So in a way you just described yet another cross card that there are certain silver linings. But then there are also certain challenges that we cannot just forget about you partner a lot with governments and government organizations. So on this particular issue of the post pandemic recovery, maybe asymmetric and and more detrimental to women coming back to the labor force. Are you seeing governments cognizant of this risk? And are you seeing them trying to ameliorate that risk?
Very much so. And I think again, that's I don't think that quite rises to silver lining, but it certainly does appear to be a wake up call. You've seen
a much greater realization that, you know, basically without child care, without a consistent uh, place and uh assuredness of access to child care
so much is there so much economic opportunity just will continue to be denied women? And so you're starting to see policymakers building that into other relief. The other thing that we haven't talked about yet, that is just
literally at epidemic portion proportions in the last year is gender based violence. And when, particularly during lockdown situations, you've seen um, violence against women just skyrocket. Unfortunately, you're seeing an increase in violence against young girls.
I was talking to one of our partners in kenya just last week and she's saying this is the first time in decades that you started to see creeping up numbers of
child marriage. So young girls who may have been abused during lockdown getting pregnant and then being being married at younger and younger ages, which is
unfortunately a trend that we were starting to see um turn around. And that too is has been a wake up call for governments. You've seen a couple of countries, um, make larger allocations of covid related funding to um
uh domestic violence shelters, for example. So you started to see a policy awareness of how
the lockdown itself and then the economic impacts really hit women harder and differently. Um, maybe that was not the most felicitous turn of phrase to say hit women, but affect women harder and differently than they do that.
I'm really glad, you know, mary, even as economist, you know, we sort of write about scarring impact of crisis. We wrote about it after the eight or nine crisis, certainly going to be some degree of scarring, but once one sort of, you know, is not cognizant of these sort of, you know, details about the impact on gender and inequality.
One sort of misses out. It's not just about the impact of the financial sector
or just bringing people back to work. It's a question of which segment of the population is disproportionately affected. So I'm glad that you're you're seeing that sort of awareness and that feeding into policy making you briefly mentioned India and Indonesia earlier and you know, I was a proud member of your Southeast asian council for a couple of years.
So I want you to tell us a bit more about your involvement in asian economies
and tell us both through your partnership with governments, but also the entrepreneurs that you're supporting.
So as a proud member of our Southeast ASIA advisory council, you know, that we we sort of entered the region in a very unusual way for us. We had a deep and very we're very honored to be um
sort of embraced by the Indonesian government in the creation of their national financial inclusion strategy, which is not typically the way that we sort of move into a market. But it gave us just a, you know, an incredible breath of vision of what the issues were, what the gender issues
might be, that the government really had not even realized where gender issues. Um you know, Indonesia has turned out to be um just such an incredible learning ground for us and it is a country that um you know, we were talking at the start of the conversation about, you know, that you have to maybe double click on the data. Indonesia is a perfect example. If you look at their published financial inclusion data, you actually see a reverse gender gap. There are more women that have a bank account in their own name
than men.
But the usage is very, very much the other way. And I think that the depth of the, you know, the financial depth for um particularly for low income women is um is really quite quite problematic, something that the government is quite aware of.
And that was why the work that we were doing with the pick Aha program
um
before the pandemic just again turned out to be so felicitous and so well timed because as they moved into covid relief, so many of the issues that were coming up um were gender related. And so we were very proud to be a, you know, a close partner of
several of the economic ministries um
uh as well as as the Social Affairs Ministry.
When they switched the pick a payment to covid relief, they doubled the number of payments and increase the frequency.
And you saw the most frequently asked question by women is
I'd like to save some of this money. I don't necessarily want to spend it all now. Um But I don't know how, how can I say that they had no real understanding that the way they had been receiving this program, this payment was in a bank account. So
you know, very basic financial literacy. We got got down to very, very quickly and explained, you know, this the ability to save within that account. Um and the fact that it was digital, we were able to do some fast digital education as well to give women the confidence to interact, particularly if they were going to leave um
savings in the account.
Now, unfortunately, we also had a lot of questions about um let's see if I'm gonna save this money, Do I have to tell my husband about it? And so that always I think that's the most
frequently second ask questions when when we're talking to women about savings. So just the the opportunity of the
um
GDP paying that the government to person payment for further financial inclusion I'd say has been a real hallmark of of the pandemic response from women's world banking.
Okay. And then um I saw in substitution particular you also you know, facilitating you know, fintech challenge and providing support to entrepreneurs in cambodia Vietnam elsewhere. So give us a flavor to the listeners about all those things that you've been doing the last few years.
No thanks for that, that prompt. Because after that sort of initial um entry into into Southeast Asia with the work with the government, we've really gotten very excited about possibilities in in the private sector as well. And as you mentioned, we've been working with a mobile provider wing in cambodia, both on their GDP. They were
they were part of the government's um
relief payments distribution process. But then more recently we took a solution actually that we had piloted in Bangladesh in terms of digitized wage payments from
garment workers and are now applying that for digitized salaries that factory workers in cambodia also received through wing and they're the real, you know, the real focus. And I'd say it's it's not just in cambodia but really goes across the region is
We were seeing 80% of those salary payments were cashed out within four hours of receipt on on day one. And Cambodia and much of Southeast Asia has really been very good about having so many things that can be paid digitally and there's really no reason to
pay your utility bills, pay your rent pace. So many of these very important household responsibilities in cash if you can keep that those payments in the digital system. So it's been both a combination of identifying use cases that are relevant for for women in particular, but also some financial education, some digital literacy around how to use that digital account so that you don't have to
have to cash out. I think we've also um
we're also very excited about maybe taking further a field, a project we worked on in um in Indonesia. We
we found that midwives have traditionally almost been a sort of secret bank account or a banking source for pregnant women who saved throughout their pregnancy
for you know, the large expense of the delivery and then the post postpartum expenses. And so we thought, well what about digitizing all of that? Because we saw not only did the midwives have mobile phones, but the majority of their patients did as well. So we've created a mobile wallet product for the midwives, but we also made the midwives um agents uh digital payments agents in their village. So that brings sort of another source of revenue for them. They're already a trusted um known quantity in the village that they had a natural business advantage,
also providing some financial education. So we're very excited about that possibility because that that
that
maternal healthcare relationship is so important for so many women around the world that we think there's a lot of uh that has a lot of legs, if you will.
What did I ask you a related question? Because I know that women's world banking does a lot of research on all these different initiatives that's taking place. Have
you had any
insights on what women do when they receive the digital payment? I mean do they use it for the things that you just talked about which is paying bills? Or do they also
end up spending more money on there?
Children's health and education than they otherwise would have? Is there any finding like that?
Um It
yes and no. I think it really depends on the circumstance in which they're receiving the payment. I think one thing that we have seen throughout the pandemic, that was a pleasant surprise is we've seen savings balances increase
you know, across the board. And so there really does seem to be an understanding amongst
low income people receiving these government relief payments that
they need to be creating a safety net. This may be this may go on for a while and so using those payments for immediate expenses is not the right policy. So we've been, we've been really pleasantly surprised to see um savings savings increase and that tends to be motivated by the woman. The
putting money aside for that longer term um need tends to be more motivated for a woman when it's something like a conditional cash transfer that she's receiving a payment if she's keeping her child in school or taking her child for preventive health care check ups on a regular basis and then receiving a payment. We see that
those payments, as I mentioned earlier, tend to go towards um you know, more nutritional um foods. You definitely see a change in, in the quality of food that's that's consumed by more members of the family.
You you definitely see health care
as a number one um use of funds for women uh in the household, that just seems to be a social norm across the world that that women are sort of responsible for the health care expenses of the family. You see um
and you see education and again, it's more members of the family staying in school for longer periods of time, including girls.
So Maryland, women's world banking has a longstanding d relationship in a number of African countries as well as in latin America
uh through the last year and a
1/2. Have you seen your operations in
Africa
evolving differently than the ones that you just talked about in asia and saying with
latin America or they
have been all the same that people are responding to incentives and challenges
similarly across the world.
That's a great question. I I do think you know that this focus on digital, the recognition that
um it's not only a great equalizer but the the the speed, convenience uh and and
the proximity of uh of the mobile payment. There's a lot of research, very interesting research that very strong correlation. And I know you you economists are always
very reluctant to ascribe correlation but and causation but we see very close cause a correlation between
um financial inclusion and the proximity of financial outlets. And so with digital agents able to be much more prevalent than the traditional bricks and mortar bank, you're seeing financial inclusion rates increase and much more so for women than for men. That convenience factor, that ability to bank from home, you know in your pocket really plays a huge role in moving women's um
moving women's financial inclusion and that's something really we've seen across the board.
But Maryland ah the
depth of the pandemic has clearly been, you know, much more felt in latin America. I have friends in Colombia and brazil and Uruguay and it's a whole different level of outbreak related disruption to lives and livelihoods. Uh So any of youse or any insights or experiences on how things are there? Reserve Asia where admittedly
the pandemic has not been that severe.
No, that's a that's a great question. I have to say. I've been
so impressed by the financial service providers that we've worked with throughout
um Latin America in there. The nimbleness of their response. The recognition of the unique issues that their clients are facing in in this time. Pretty much you know, all of the countries that were working in did put payment moratoria in place for any loans that that these financial service providers might have had outstanding. And where I think the latin american financial service providers were so fortunate is that there there is a higher level of digitization. More women have access to um to mobile phones there than in some of the other places we've talked about. And that factor alone allowed these financial service providers to stay in touch with their client base. And so they had a much better idea
coming out of the moratorium. You know, who was going to be able to repay, who was going to be able to um you know, who is going to need to restructure but would ultimately get back back on their feet. We saw,
you know, you and I haven't talked yet about our impact investment work and
that
that is really where we've seen some some real some real breakout opportunities. We just invested in a Fintech in Colombia that sort of works
on a model that has worked very well for women over the years, just where you have um
trusted members of the community,
doing initial credit screening
assessment of the household's ability to repay and then bringing that information back to the Fintech who uses an uh scoring algorithm. Um They have both men and women um refers but it's been very interesting. Women are much
less frequently referring than men,
but they're the rate of alone actually being dispersed and then that loan being repaid is much higher amongst the women referrals and that ability to stay in touch with the client through these women refers that are in the um in the community
has just allowed this Fintech to really maintain a very high rate of repayment.
They've just started an insurance payment that's been bundled with some of their loans in response to some of the health care related issues that have come up with the pandemic. So you know, I'm a bit of a broken record here on the digital, but it's we've really seen some instances in latin America where that has been um
you know, that's been very helpful in Mexico. We're seeing some of the banks being really responsive
two
uh small business entrepreneurs trying to move their businesses online and then facilitating online payments for them.
Okay, so I'm gonna get to the investment fund in a second, but since you brought this, I I just thought of this issue, which is, so I live in Singapore and we have a very large number of female domestic workers in Singapore who sent back money to the Philippines or burma India wherever they come from.
You have similar presence in Hong kong and increasingly so in other parts of Asia. So clearly um there is a huge amount of women migrant workers formerly employed, These are not informal workers and they are sending money back home. So, to your point about digital and facilitation of these things,
uh any interesting things that are happening on the digital space on
remittances
of? So glad you raised it. In fact, we just in the last few months launched a um Remittance project in the in Indonesia Singapore corridor with a Fintech in an Indonesian fintech and looking at not just
facilitating the payment itself, which is kind of the easy part in a way there's some digital literacy involved at both the remit er and the recipient end. But really how how do we make sure that that that Remittance can be uh an on ramp or
a driver of broader inclusion and trying to understand the broader set of needs on the part of both the senders and the receivers. We have seen some really interesting research that um you know, centers have very strong views about how they want their money
um spent when it's received. They obviously, particularly during this pandemic time I've wanted, you know, for whatever consumption needs are required. But the vastly most desired outcome for some portion of the funding, our health care
and education. And so we're looking at is there a way to segregate payments? You know, there's some data, some interesting behavioral uh economics data that shows even if you just label the payment the Remittance for education,
there's a higher likelihood that at least a portion of the Remittance will be used um for for that purpose. So we're using a lot of um you know, behavioral techniques, a lot of design techniques. How do we make sure that that payment is
achieving the most in terms of both financial inclusion
and the goals that both the center and the and the recipient are are looking to achieve.
All right. So these are innovative activities and clearly, you know, Fintech start doing it because they can make money out of it. And if they can make money out of it while doing good, uh women's World Banking can then start offering impact opportunities. So Maryland you sit on two of the impact investment funds at W. W. B.
Uh tell us about those funds and what they do and how they happen doing
so this has been I think, you know, one of my proudest achievements in my time at women's World Banking is moving us from being a uh I think a trusted researcher, a trusted advisor. There's a lot of work that we are have been
trusted with within our partners, um to help them move the needle, both in terms of outreach to women clients, but greater gender diversity amongst their leadership and board. But the ability to really drive change as a shareholder. And as a you know, a member of a board of directors really has outpaced anything we were ever able to see um as an advisor. So I'm very excited. Our first, our first fund was a $50 million fund. We made 10 investments across the globe. Most of them were in more traditional microfinance institutions, although we had a couple of interesting outliers as an sme lender in um in Jordan for example, um
all of them just got really hard hit with moratoriums and you know, liquidity issues and all sorts of issues that came up with the pandemic. I am thrilled that so many of them had, as I've been saying, um
really good digital connections to their clients were able to stay on top of clients. We started to see,
you know, as early as early last summer repayment rates starting to tick up even under moratorium because the population they were serving were so intent on maintaining that line of credit, maintaining that ability to borrow come as their businesses came out of
out of the pandemic.
So we had while we had a, you know, pretty significant right down evaluation right at that first quarter. Um when the pandemic came on board, we've been able to to improve our evaluation steadily. We've had a couple of very strong exits um of the vet first fund portfolio.
To my amazement, we were able to have a first closing of $75 million New York Lockdown, which I'm not sure in retrospect, I would have written a check during during those first few weeks, but we were just very very uh
grateful to our LPS for having that,
that that faith in us as we uh as we were raising money over the immediate pre pandemic period, we've made four investments during the, during the this this period since last March. Um really interesting companies. Three of them are Frontex. The fourth is uh an affordable housing lender in India
that makes it a requirement that the woman's name be on the title to the property that they are financing against. Because that asset ownership
relationship to empowerment is so, so strong. Our most recent investment and actually, the largest investment we've made to date was in a PTP micro lender in Indonesia, a Martha. And we're really excited about the opportunity there. Um they've performed extraordinarily well throughout the,
throughout the pandemic and we're very excited about working with them on building out the platform and other products that they might be able to offer on that platform. We are still in capital raising mode, so I I can't say too much more to your, your podcast audience, but
we think this is a really exciting time to have capital for, particularly for digital financial service opportunities and for an ability to, to support women, um, as they come out of the pandemic.
Okay, so it sounds like, you know, it's gone very, very well and, and I'm really glad it has, but the life of somebody who raises money from skeptical investors cannot be that easy.
So share with us the skeptical questions that you get
and tell us the responses that you make, that clinches the deal for you.
Well, there is, there's this really frustrate, I'm so glad you asked this timer. Um, there's this very frustrating, um,
sort of false equivalency. I think in a lot of investors minds that I think first when you say impact, there is somehow an assumption, whether it's stated or not that that means, oh, I have to give up a little bit of return.
And then when you say women, somehow that's oh, I'm going to have to give up even more return.
So I think really one of the first hurdles that we have to get over really with everybody, whether it's, you know, development finance institutions, you know, even people who are mission focused
to, to say
at the heart of our business proposition,
is that a financial institution that is committed to serving women
is actually a very profitable growth strategy. And that that's the strategy we're investing in. And what's been really gratifying is that we've seen
In our portfolio that the institutions that have more than 50% women clients have had fully
600 basis points improved our oe throughout the life of our the holding period of our investments. We've seen amongst the during the holding period amongst our portfolio companies, we've seen in 82% increase
in women clients. So we're very proud that we've really been able to to make that keys to our our our portfolio companies. But then really being able to show that that that almost overweighting of women clients
shows up in better returns. And that's the question that the investors we really have to have to address.
Fantastic. Now these sort of ground level
insights are not only, you know, useful cases for convincing a skeptical investor, but I would think that this would also benefit companies that are considering gender equity within their ranks. So my understanding is that women's world banking also does work with companies to provide them with tools and programs
to build gender diverse teams.
So we haven't really talked about
that. Would you share with
us? You know, what kind of stuff you
do,
but that's really such a fundamental part of the, you know, the whole picture that we we see that institutions that have divert diverse teams and particularly gender diverse teams, do have outsized financial uh financial performance. So women's world banking has been offering
some variation of leadership training that really drives women's leadership inside both financial service providers and then more recently inside financial regulators. Um, you know, through pretty much throughout our history,
there's a sort of model that we've stumbled on in the last um
eight years or so that works particularly well where you pair a senior executive or in the case of the regulators, a senior regulator, that's more or less the deputy governor level of a central bank with a high potential woman. And they both go through training
separately and together on the financial service providers side, our academic partners, the Wharton School at, on the regulatory side, we're partnering with Oxford University. So there's, you know, really world class, world calibre leadership and and management training. And then we're providing
um that that sort of extra sauce of why does diversity matter? What does diversity in a policy actually look like? So many policymakers just assume policy is gender blind when nothing could be further from the truth. But
and once their eyes have been open to this, it can really, really, really change minds. So that
that making sure that there is a group of both men and women in an organization that I understand the value of diversity and understand how policies and products impact women differently is um, is a very important part of the way we drive impact.
That's great. Okay. Finally, a little bit of crystal ball gazing.
You've been working at the space for the last couple of
decades. So seeing the
Progress that's been made, where do you see the state of women's financial inclusion in the year,
2040. Ohright. I've got almost 20 years. I do think that we will easily be at parody
um,
on the measurements that I mentioned before. And my my crystal ball is that the technology gap will also close and maybe women may even exceed because the technology benefits like convenience confidentiality
security.
When women get it, they adopt much, much faster rates than men. So I'm going to go so far as to say we will have a bit of reverse gender gap. And well,
my successor will come on your successors podcast and talk about how we can work on men's financial inclusion.
Well, we'll definitely look forward to that Maryland Eskandarian. Thank you so much for being on our show today.
Great! Thank you so much for having me time and please stay safe.
Absolutely. Thanks to our listeners to Cope. Time was produced by martin Tuckey, daisy Sharma and violently provided additional assistance. It is for information only and does not represent any trade recommendations. All 56 episodes of copay time are available on youtube
and on all major podcast platforms, including apple, google and Spotify.
As for research publications, webinars and live streams. You can find them all by Googling BBS Research Library. Have a great day.
