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Gender-Intelligent Banking is a key to Viksit Bharat– is the financial sector ready to contribute?

Posted on by harshita

India’s female workforce is transforming the country’s economic landscape. The Female Labour Force Participation Rate has nearly doubled—from 23% in 2017–18 to 42% in 2023–24—making it one of the sharpest rises among BRICS nations. With women now earning an average of USD 225.90 in urban areas and USD 140.86 in rural areas, their growing disposable income signals a powerful, underleveraged market for financial services. The surge in women-led MSMEs—up 75% in FY22—further highlights this shift.

Financially empowered, this growing segment of Indian women is accessing multiple financial services and actively using multiple banking channels and advanced financial products. These “advanced users” regularly save, transact, and borrow. They are educated, engaged in economic activities that provide relatively stable incomes, are familiar with digital interfaces, and face few mobility constraints. Collectively, these characteristics demonstrate financial capability and decision-making autonomy, signaling high readiness for deeper financial engagement.

Globally, 66% of married millennial women are actively involved in financial decisions, compared to earlier generations. Women control 80% of household spending and 40% of global wealth. This represents a significant business opportunity for financial service providers to unlock the largely untapped value within a segment historically underrepresented in formal financial systems. Women’s continued exclusion across India’s financial ecosystem is estimated to cost the country nearly USD 688 billion—directly undermining its ambition to become a USD 5 trillion economy and to meet the Viksit Bharat vision of a USD 30 trillion economy by 2047.

These financially independent women are visible in the financial system, but their participation in savings, credit, and insurance remains shallow. Thus, their financial journeys remain underleveraged. For financial institutions targeting them, inclusion is both a social and business opportunity.

Risk-return advantage: Women as a stable, high-value segment 

Women customers consistently exhibit lower risk profiles and higher financial discipline, making them attractive for financial institutions. Globally, non performing loan rates for women-led small businesses average just 2.7% – 33% lower than for men. Women also save more, borrow prudently, and generate healthier loan-to-deposit ratios, providing banks with liquidity and lower risk exposure. This  behavioral  readiness is also reflected in broader trends. Globally, 66% of married millennial women are actively involved in financial decisions, compared to earlier generations; women control 80% of household spending and 40% of global wealth. McKinsey reports that between 2018 and 2023, financial wealth grew by 43%, while wealth controlled by women grew by 51%, highlighting a significant and expanding market segment.

Gender intelligent banking

This leads us to Gender Intelligent Banking, a strategic approach where financial institutions design, deliver, and manage products, services, and customer experiences that consciously account for the different financial needs, behaviors, and barriers faced by women and men. It goes beyond simply offering products for women, it embeds gender insights into the entire banking value chain, from strategy and policy to product design and marketing, staff training, and customer engagement.

Financial institutions that integrate gender-intelligent practices proactively position themselves as leaders in a rapidly evolving market. The Government of India’s push through initiatives such as the Stand-Up India scheme, and the inclusion of gender priorities in national financial inclusion and MSME policies reflect a growing policy emphasis on women’s economic participation. As awareness increases, customers, particularly women, are more likely to engage with institutions that demonstrate gender sensitivity in their products, outreach, and service delivery. But are FIs ready?

By responding to this shift, financial institutions not only capture a larger share of the women’s market but also expand the overall customer base  while  strengthening  offerings  for  all  customers, effectively increasing the size of the financial inclusion “pie.” Aligning product design, distribution channels, and customer support with women’s needs, institutions build greater customer trust and strengthen brand goodwill, women customers are more likely to stay with and recommend institutions that demonstrate empathy and responsiveness to their life circumstances. Gender-intelligent design also diversifies customer profiles, which spreads credit and liquidity risk across a broader base and improves portfolio resilience.

It also allows financial institutions to differentiate their brand, anticipate customer needs, and drive product innovation that serves all customers, expanding market share before competitors catch up. Thus, early movers can build organizational capabilities that are difficult for competitors to replicate, gain stronger partnerships with regulators,  development agencies, and ESG-focused investors, and secure access to funding aligned with gender and sustainability goals.

Thus, the evidence is unambiguous: women represent the largest untapped market with a potential to contribute 14% to the 5 trillion economy goal and the USD 30 trillion goal for Viksit Bharat by 2047. They are ready to engage, and they bring both stability and long-term value to the financial system. Institutions that view this moment as an opportunity, rather than an obligation, will shape the next phase of financial growth through innovation, resilience, and foresight. Business share will belong to early movers who build new markets that are sustainable, equitable, and designed for long-term value creation.

This was first published in “Hans India” on 26th December, 2025

Inside the innovation lab: How institutions can learn, adapt, and scale like startups

Posted on by harshita

“We want to work with startups, but I am terrified our systems will break, or someone will say we wasted public money.” This was the frank admission from a senior government official in a meeting. Such fear is not unfounded. Institutions carry reputations, rules, and people with careers tied to “doing things right.” Startups carry urgency, unproven ideas, and lack a safety net.  

Yet, the world demands that institutions and startups come together if we want to solve problems at scale across areas, such as climate, inclusion, and health. 

Through the years, many public and private institutions have attempted to bridge the gap between these two worlds. One of the more promising constructs is the innovation lab. A lab is a structured, institutionally anchored space where startups, policymakers, and teams can safely test, learn, and scale innovations without disrupting day-to-day operations. It helps institutions stay future-ready as it systematically phases out outdated processes and embeds new ones, which ensures they evolve continuously – as we have seen in cases like UIDAI (India), City Exchange Program under MoHUA (India), and the governments of Singapore and the UK. Strong models also come from Rwanda’s IremboGov, Colombia’s Public Innovation Team, and Portugal’s LabX—all of which demonstrate measurable impact in digitising services, improving policy design, and scaling public-sector innovation. But poorly designed or poorly run labs can easily become stalled projects—promising on paper yet irrelevant in practice. 

This blog draws from MSC’s experience and conviction on how to improve labs. This belief is grounded in our work. MSC has built and run innovation labs inside ministries, state departments, regulators, and financial institutions, not as side projects but as embedded capability engines. :In the last 3 years alone, MSC has built  

  • The Bihar Krishi Lab unified 50+ state agriculture schemes into a single digital window, enabling 0.75 million farmers to access advisory and input services more efficiently. It is now gearing up to reach 4 million farmers. 
  • FinLab Bangladesh worked with a2i and Bangladesh Bank, accelerating 8 pilots, strengthening regulatory sandboxes, and influencing reforms in payments and agent banking benefitting 100,000 female garment workers and 50,000 microenterprises. 

Below, we have documented what works, what often fails, how MSC builds labs that scale, and why institutions and funders must step up.  

Lessons about innovation labs from the Global South 

When we discuss innovation labs, we often cite examples, such as MindLab from Denmark or other Western countries. However, valuable lessons have emerged from the Global South, from Peru to Bangladesh, Chile to Botswana, where institutions must innovate as a necessity, and not as an experiment. Across these countries, governments, large private entities, and development agencies have quietly reinvented how they learn, adapt, and scale ideas. Some have succeeded in turning labs into institutional muscle—a repeatable capability to test, learn, measure, and channel innovation back into the institution’s growth cycle. Others have encountered challenges along the way, and their experiences offer equally valuable insights. 

What worked are the labs that breathe with the institution 

  1.  MineduLAB, Peru, turned evidence into policy: Peru’s Ministry of Education created MineduLAB with J-PAL and IPA as an embedded unit that tested interventions inside real programs, with findings directly shaping policy.
    Lesson: Labs work when embedded within institutions and have access to budgets and decision-makers. (J-PAL case study) 
  2. Laboratorio deGobierno, Chile, built a culture, not a project: Chile’s Laboratorio de Gobierno became a permanent institution working across ministries to redesign services. It earned legitimacy by working directly with frontline officials and sustained itself across political cycles by embedding innovation as a public-sector culture rather than a short-term project
    Lesson: Political legitimacy and continuity matter. Labs designed to outlast administrations turn innovation from a one-off experiment into a routine government practice. (OECD-OPSI) 
  3. a2i Innovation Lab, Bangladesh, made innovation a civil-service function:a2i began with digitizing public services and later embedded innovation officers within ministries, turning innovation into a routine civil-service role and significantly improving service delivery. Lesson: Labs last when innovation becomes everyone’s job. Institutionalized innovation roles ensure it outlives any one project or funder.  
  4. Botswana’s GovTech Lab transformed hackathons into vehicles for meaningful reform:The GovTech Lab in Botswana, backed by Botswana’s SmartBots strategy, evolved into a structured cycle of scouting, incubation, and integration into national e-government systems.
    Lesson: Labs can start small, but they should be systematic.  

Innovation must move from one-off events to embedded, continuous cycles. As NITI Aayog’s 2023 paper notes, labs should help institutions turn innovation into a sustained habit—not isolated bursts of activity. 

Labs that lost the rhythm and connection with institutions and users failed 

  • Labs that stayed outside the system: OPSI–OECD analyses show that many donor-funded labs ran as parallel units with little institutional embedding, and often disappeared when funding cycles or leadership changed—along with their learning and momentum. 
  • Labs that could not adapt to political or leadership change: The fate of MindLab in Denmark is a cautionary tale repeated in many developing contexts. When labs depend on individual champions, they risk being dismantled when leadership changes. 

How MSC’s labs work to bridge current gaps 

At MSC, we believe innovation labs should be engines of capability. Here is how we build them, rooted in a customized institutional reality: 

  1. Problem first, tech later: Every lab begins with the question “What problem truly matters to the institution and its beneficiaries?” and not “Let us explore AI.” We co-diagnose with leaders and frontline staff to pick two to three mission problems. 
  2. Anchored sponsorship and internal champions: From day one, our senior leadership backs a lab. We establish a steering committee or “champions circle” inside the institution. This ensures labs against cuts when leadership changes. 
  3. Overlay but embed: Labs under MSC work with the external startup ecosystem, such as accelerators, funders, and domain NGOs. They also place a small team or liaison inside the institution, in strategy, planning, and program units. This ensures that the labs are neither external nor isolated. 
  4. Be ambitious but stay focused: Innovation demands ambition, but without focus, it risks losing direction. The lab defines its niche within the innovation value chain, whether it involves early-stage support, commercialization, adoption, or scalability, and delves deeply into it. Labs need to stay focused to ensure measurable progress while they collaborate with other innovation centers that handle complementary stages. 
  5. Portfolio of experiments and scaling plan: We run safe and riskier pilots in parallel with clear metrics, timelines, and budget. However, before pilots, we design how each pilot will scale through the procurement route, budget line, policy clearance, and necessary legal or regulatory changes. 
  6. De-risking demand and adoption: We go beyond building solutions to help users adopt them. That means field testing, trust building, education, collecting feedback, and iteration. Many labs fail because they forget this side of the loop. 
  7. Lessons, transparency, evolution: Labs publish interim lessons, dashboard metrics, failure logs, and playbooks. At fixed intervals, we revisit the portfolio, reset focus, and adapt to new leadership or institutional shifts. 

MSC labs are more than experiments, they  are institutional engines of change designed to scale pilots to system-wide levels, iterate with feedback, align policies, and design for adoption. 

Yet, even with the right design, innovation labs bring their own evolving challenges, especially in the public sector, which balance agility with accountability and experimentation with institutional rhythm.  

The solution is to keep them dynamic, mandate-driven, and KPI-focused. At MSC, we view each lab as a living system that constantly adapts, learns, and aligns with institutional goals so that innovation remains both practical and lasting. 

Why should institutions and funders consider labs? 

Innovation labs are not luxury experiments. They are the scaffolding through which large institutions can learn to become adaptive. They can turn friction into rhythm and promote collaboration between institutions and startups. 

Let us build these bridges together. 

Why school sanitation in Odisha deserves our urgent attention

Posted on by harshita

“When women are educated, their countries become stronger and more prosperous.” –– Michelle Obama 

Meera’s story echoes a million unheard voices 

Meera, an inquisitive 12-year-old, dreams of becoming a science teacher. Yet, every few days, she misses school because the toilets are not functional. There is no water, no lock, and no privacy. What begins as an occasional absence slowly erodes her confidence. Meera is one of the many voices for whom unsafe sanitation is a hidden barrier to opportunity. Behind her struggle lies a system crippled by irregular cleaning, delayed repairs, and chronic under-funding. Toilets, when they exist, are often locked, filthy, or unusable. Sanitation is not just about toilets. It ensures safety, dignity, and freedom to access public places without fear.  

A sanitation crisis hidden in plain sight

 

The dire situation of the sanitation facilities in government schools across Odisha needs immediate attention. MSC’s recent assessment for Water.org uncovered stark and unsettling realities in Odisha’s public schools. The truth behind dysfunctional bathrooms often remains hidden behind classroom walls. Based on the primary data collected from the field, more than half of the schools clean their toilets only once a week, while about one in 10 do so just once a fortnight or even less. Two-thirds face long delays in toilet repairs, which leave facilities unusable for months. Many toilets that are officially marked as functional are locked. Students must relieve themselves in the open. For girls, the situation is even more alarming. Though 85% of schools have separate toilets for them, 50% lack a water supply, and nearly 33% of them do not have a functional latch, which makes these spaces unsafe and unusable. Additionally, 43% of students reported that there are not enough toilets to meet the needs of all learners. These statistics signify an alarming truth. They tell a story of interrupted childhoods, lost confidence, and diminishing dreams.  

The far reach of the bathroom access 

Poor sanitation in schools has a ripple effect on the entire community. It quietly erodes health, learning, and community well-being. 

The short-term consequences of poor sanitation in schools are as follows: 

  1. Health hazards: Unhygienic facilities spread diarrhea, UTIs, and skin infections, which lead to absenteeism and higher medical costs. 
  2. Disrupted learning: When students feel anxious about using toilets, their focus and confidence plummet.
  3. Extra burden on teachers and staff: Teachers and midday-meal workers often double up as cleaners, which compromises teaching quality.

Consequently, poor sanitation in schools has a lasting impact on both children and society. Some of the long-term consequences are as follows: 

  1. Gender disparities in education: The lack of adequate WASH facilities has a direct impact on girls’ education. Many girls miss school during menstruation due to poor sanitation and hygiene support, and in some cases, this leads to them dropping out altogether.  
  2. Relapse to open defecation: Broken school toilets drive a return to defecation, undoing the gains from the Swachh Bharat program. 
  3. Perpetuation of poor hygiene practices: Children grow up to believe that unhygienic conditions are normal. 

The apathy and misplaced priorities of regulatory bodies 

The fundamental issue behind Odisha’s school sanitation crisis is not merely a shortage of resources, but a deeper lack of intent and prioritization. Clean and functional toilets continue to be treated as a secondary concern rather than a basic necessity by the concerned  authorities. School administrators operate under tight budgets and competing pressures, often prioritizing academic performance and visible infrastructure projects over hygiene and sanitation. This sustained de-prioritization creates a cycle of neglect, where poor sanitation becomes normalized, compromising students’ dignity, health, and ability to learn.  

Why policies alone do not deliver 

There are policies in place that seek to ensure proper sanitation in schools, but two major roadblocks hinder their effectiveness: 

Inadequate funding: Inadequate funding remains a major challenge. Authorities allocate only about 5 to 10% of the overall composite grant, which amounts to roughly INR 50,000 (USD 557.5) per school each year, for sanitation-related activities. However, in many schools, this limited amount also must cover several other essential expenses, which leaves very little specifically for cleaning supplies, worker salaries, and minor repairs. As a result, schools struggle to maintain even the most basic hygiene standards.

Poor implementation and weak monitoring: Guidelines require twice-daily cleaning, yet most schools manage once a week. Schools rarely maintain separate accounts for sanitation spending, and water shortages remain chronic. 

A policy without funding and accountability is a promise unkept. 

Odisha’s challenge mirrors a national challenge 

While the situation in Odisha is alarming, it is far from an isolated issue. Across India, schools struggle with broken toilets, weak hygiene education, and indifferent monitoring. The lessons from Odisha serve as a microcosm of a nationwide challenge that requires urgent attention and systemic solutions. 

India must treat school sanitation as a non-negotiable to truly advance its education and gender-equality goals. A classroom without a functional toilet can never be a place of learning. It is a symbol of how we collectively fail vulnerable children in their basic rights. 

How can we turn intent into action? 

Odisha has piloted innovative approaches to address these challenges. These include engaging child cabinets and student clubs to monitor daily hygiene practices. However, we need to implement more targeted interventions: 

  1. Institutionalize sanitation financing: Schools should introduce a dedicated sanitation budget within school accounts. This ensures structured financial planning, transparency, and consistent funding for sanitation infrastructure and maintenance, which reduces ad-hoc spending and underfunding.  
  2. Professionalize the sanitation workforce: School authorities need to implement a certification program for sanitation workers through accredited training institutes, with a focus on cleaning techniques, minor repairs, and waste management. Schools should also provide the certified candidates with uniforms and toolkits, among other items, and enable their deployment across nearby schools for regular work. This will enhance professionalism and improve overall facility maintenance.  
  3. Establish hygiene education hubs: Schools should create interactive hygiene learning spaces within schools where students can engage with practical lessons on cleanliness and health. This encourages a hands-on understanding of hygiene and builds lifelong habits.  
  4. Implement digital monitoring and accountability: Schools could deploy digital tools for real-time monitoring of sanitation facilities and establish school-level “sanitation warrior” committees. These committees will promote accountability, data-driven maintenance decisions, and active participation from students and staff.  
  5. Integrate hygiene into curricula: School administrative bodies should embed hygiene education into the formal curriculum using age-appropriate materials and interactive teaching methods. This helps cultivate sustainable hygiene practices and reduces absenteeism due to preventable illnesses. 
  6. Adopt low-maintenance, sustainable sanitation infrastructure: Schools must modernize sanitation infrastructure with biodigesters, twin-pits, or composting systems to minimize maintenance needs and environmental impact. They should also emphasize durable, gender-inclusive, and climate-resilient designs that support continuous functionality.


A question of dignity and equity that lies beyond toilets A clean, safe, private toilet can decide whether a child learns today or stays home tomorrow. Schools do not just build and maintain toilets. They build the bedrock of the nation. Girls, such as Meera, deserve classrooms where their dreams are not disrupted by the absence of basic dignity. It is time to break the cycle of neglect and build a system where no child must choose between education and the fundamental right to safe sanitation, and where every student can pursue their aspirations safely. 

Cities that care: Incorporate caregiving infrastructure into urban planning

Posted on by harshita

Everyone needs care, but the care needs of some are particularly urgent, and this population is steadily rising. The elderly are projected to reach 158 million in 2025

(UNFPA). There are 158 million children under six (UNICEF), and about 40-90 million people with disabilities (World Bank).

The care of all these segments requires supportive physical and human infrastructure, as it depends on human skill and care-friendly environments at home and outside.

These services can help families secure supplementary care when needed, especially as women continue to be the primary caregivers (Time Use Survey 2025). Similarly, physical infrastructure for care affects how easily primary caregivers can manage their daily responsibilities for their dependents while participating in economic activities.

Let us choose the latter against the backdrop of childcare and women’s increasing participation in the labour force, which rose from 23% in 2018 to 37% in 2023. Since 2019, women’s care work has remained over 300 minutes daily, while paid work

increased by six minutes. Yet, India’s public and workplace infrastructure continues to take “care” for granted, assuming that the design of public spaces has no impact on it.

Unlike roads, railways and power grids designed to facilitate movement and commerce, the care infrastructure, including lactation rooms, changing stations and creches, remain inadequate or completely lacking in modern cities.

In metro stations, public parks, courts, police stations, marketplaces and most offices, this infrastructure is either non-existent or inadequate. Navigating streets, buses, railways and footpaths with strollers can be exhausting and impossible, with the hardships compounded for women with disabilities.

Despite accessibility features, the National Building Code lacks lactation rooms, rendering public infrastructure inconvenient and exclusionary to breastfeeding mothers returning to work. Without supportive environments, World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on breastfeeding are difficult to follow for mothers returning to work.

As high as 81% of mothers said they were uncomfortable feeding their children in public due to the lack of proper breastfeeding places. Only 6% of Indian mothers feel comfortable breastfeeding in public despite legal protections. Without safe and hygienic spaces, many are forced to skip feedings or use storage closets and public toilets, which are neither safe nor dignified options.

An IIT Delhi study found that young mothers with infants are the least mobile in India. These design gaps subtly shape who feels welcome in public spaces and potentially push many women out of the workforce after childbirth, thereby weakening India’s economic engine.

India must embed care infrastructure into city planning, workplace design and transportation networks. This requires institutionalizing a future-ready national care policy encompassing three key areas:

First, the National Guidelines that mandate lactation centres in health facilities must be extended to all public spaces, with standardized infrastructure like crèches, changing stations, incorporating safe and accessible design. This should be integrated into the National Building Code 2016.

Second, investments in human care infrastructure by professionalizing caregiving services and supporting women-led care enterprises.

Third, anchor these through a national care policy, linking care to labour, urban development and health, with adequate budgets and workplace protections. These should encourage affordable and high-quality care services from the private sector. Public campaigns normalizing male caregiving roles and reducing stigma around breastfeeding can strengthen care as a pillar of social equity and economic productivity.

Globally, countries are reimagining care and its supporting infrastructure. Spain and Colombia are integrating care into city planning. Singapore offers portable lactation pods that can be located and accessed through an app. The US has a legal requirement for lactation rooms, with reasonable lactation breaks for breastfeeding employees.

The UK offers up to £2,000 per child annually to help cover registered childcare expenses. Argentina offers childcare allowances for unemployed or informal workers and childcare in the workplace. Germany offers care insurance to cover the costs of long-term care services.

India has the opportunity to craft its unique state-led model rooted in scale, local context and inclusion of families from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. This will allow us to shape a future of work where women are no longer forced to choose between caregiving and economic participation, but are supported in doing both with dignity and freedom.

As Nancy Folbre reminds us, “The work of care is not just an obligation, it is a form of social wealth creation.” It is time we designed systems that recognize and reward this critical labour as foundational to a just and thriving economy.

This was first published in “Mint” on 4th July 2025.

How a government scheme turned gender intelligence into assets

Posted on by harshita

India stands at a pivotal moment in its development journey, with the largest-ever cohort of educated, digitally savvy, and financially aware young women—many single, ambitious, and ready to lead. For the first time, they’re entering the economy with real access to banking and digital tools. But access alone isn’t autonomy. True empowerment begins when financial inclusion evolves into asset ownership, enabling women to shape their futures and achieve financial independence. 

This shift from access to ownership is still a work in progress—but the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY), launched in 2015, offers valuable lessons in how gender-intelligent design can accelerate asset creation, drive behavioural changes, and scale inclusion. 

Preventive inclusion pays dividends: initiating girls’ financial inclusion during childhood helps preempt structural barriers for women and reduces the long-term costs of corrective policy interventions. 

Design drives behavior: Gender-intelligent products can reshape household saving patterns, directing resources towards girls and fostering sustained financial commitment to their futures. 

Scalability within existing systems: SSY shows that gender-intelligent design is both feasible and scalable within mainstream institutions, creating opportunities to better serve underserved women. 

While most policies for women begin in adulthood, like credit, cash transfers, or pensions, meaningful inclusion requires early lifecycle intervention. Early interventions allow time for accumulation and the magic of compounding to kick in, not just in numbers but also in terms of financial behavior change. 

SSY exemplifies a successful early lifecycle intervention. Accounts are opened for girls aged 0–10, with deposits continuing through adolescence (10–18) and maturing in early adulthood (18–25), aligning with education and marriage milestones. Partial withdrawals at 18 can fund higher education, while balances left beyond 21 continue earning interest. Since its introduction, the returns have consistently exceeded 7.6%, making it an attractive long-term savings option for parents. SSY has grown from 42 lakh accounts and ₹123 crore in deposits in 2014–15 to 3.5 crore accounts and over ₹3 lakh crore in 2024–25, with the national average deposit per account at ₹63,402. To put that in perspective, this corpus rivals the annual budgets of several Indian states. 

Regional studies show that SSY has improved education equity and financial security for girls and parents’ preparedness for future needs. It changed aspirations from marriage-focused saving to investing in higher education. This behavioral shift mirrors global child-focused financial products like Singapore’s Child Development Account and the UK’s Junior ISA. However, SSY is among the few globally to direct financial assets explicitly in the name of girls, correcting a historic gender gap in asset ownership. 

The success of SSY also hinges on institutional participation. Post offices and banks have played a pivotal role in scaling the scheme and building trust. This is critical in a country like India, where gaps in women’s financial inclusion and asset ownership are particularly pronounced, underlining the need for banks to deploy and scale more gender-intelligent products. Women remain the most unbanked and underbanked segment in India. IFC estimates credit demand among women-owned very small enterprises alone is ₹83,600 crore (approx. $11.4 billion). Demand for savings, investment, insurance, and pension products also remains underserved. SSY has helped post offices and banks attract substantial deposits for the government treasury while earning commissions, making it a win-win for both financial institutions and women. 

Post Offices manage about 68% of all 3.07 crore SSY accounts, thus leveraging their historic trust and large network. This demonstrates that gender-intelligent design can scale through established financial channels, integrating equity-oriented products into mainstream banking without the need for parallel structures. 

As SSY approaches its tenth anniversary, it presents a pivotal moment to expand its reach in lower participation states and evolve to meet the financial aspirations of today’s families. Enhancing the scheme by raising the investment cap and extending the 15-year deposit window can further strengthen its returns and long-term impact. 

SSY is more than a savings scheme; it’s a blueprint for inclusive growth. It shows that policy can shift household behavior. The next challenge is for financial institutions to sustain this momentum by creating gender-intelligent products that build trust, deliver long-term value, and make inclusion measurable and accountable for girls. 

For policymakers, this means embedding gender intelligence into every layer of financial inclusion. For markets, it means women as mainstream economic drivers and designing solutions that truly serve their financial needs. 

SSY 2.0 can continue to be a powerful instrument for gender-intelligent financial inclusion, transforming early savings into lifelong security for millions of girls.

This was first published in “The Hindustan times” on 28th November, 2025.

The policy paradox at the heart of Bangladesh’s digital finance story

Posted on by harshita

Bangladesh Bank has mandated that 50% of agent-banking representatives must be women, while fewer than 3% of the country’s MFS agents, the channel that handles the lion’s share of daily cash-in, cash-out, remittance, and G2P transactions, are female.

Bangladesh stands at a critical inflection point in its digital financial services (DFS) journey. Agent banking and mobile financial services (MFS) have transformed the country’s financial landscape, taking formal transactions to millions of households and building one of the most extensive last-mile service architectures in South Asia.

Today, MFS channels  operate through over 1.5 million agents and support more than 200 million registered accounts, while agent banking has grown to over 16,000 agents and more than 21,000 outlets serving customers across all districts. Yet within this achievement lies a structural imbalance: Bangladesh Bank has mandated that 50% of agent-banking representatives must be women, while fewer than 3% of the country’s MFS agents, the channel that handles the lion’s share of daily cash-in, cash-out, remittance, and G2P transactions, are female.

This mismatch is more than policy oversight; it represents a deeper market design challenge. The gender mandate applies only to the smaller, slower-growing agent-banking channel, while the much larger MFS ecosystem remains almost entirely male. Women now hold 42% of the total 239.3 million registered MFS accounts, yet have almost no representation among the frontline providers who shape trust, privacy, grievance resolution, and usage. Representation at the last mile is not symbolic; it determines whether women can transact confidently and independently.

What appears to be a simple representation gap is, in reality, a question of whether the architecture of Bangladesh’s digital economy is built to recognise women as full economic actors. It echoes a broader global ambition to advance women’s empowerment, expand decent and dignified work, and strengthen inclusive, resilient digital infrastructure (SDG 5, SDG 8, SDG 9). And it raises a fundamental question: Can a digital economy be truly inclusive if women are consumers but not providers of financial services?

Why women agents matter 

The absence of women at the frontline reinforces gender gaps in trust, privacy, and confidence-patterns consistently observed in global evidence from India, Nigeria, and East Africa, as well as in recent women-led agent pilots in Bangladesh. Female agents build trust, improve customer retention, and help convert dormant or irregular women users into active ones, while reaching segments male agents often struggle to serve: young women, new mothers, informal entrepreneurs, and socially restricted female household members.

They also strengthen operational reliability, with lower churn and higher adherence to service standards, directly benefiting providers. Most importantly, women agents expand women’s economic agency, offering one of the most accessible pathways into formal entrepreneurship, digital capability, and income generation.

The constraint stack

Women’s exclusion from MFS agent networks is not driven by a lack of interest or capability; it stems from how the wider financial and retail ecosystem is structured. The MFS agent model in Bangladesh was built around male-owned retail shops, high-mobility cash cycles, and regulatory frameworks that do not monitor or incentivise gender-balanced networks. These sector wide design features interact with women’s lived realities-mobility constraints, discomfort in male-run environments, lower smartphone access, and household negotiations around public-facing work to produce a pipeline that few women can enter and even fewer can sustain. In effect, the system functions as if women were never intended to be agents.

The table that follows breaks these constraints down into the structural touchpoints where the exclusion becomes most visible:

Beyond the myths: Interrogating provider assumptions

Provider concerns about onboarding women agents: liquidity pressure, footfall, security risks, and training costs are rooted in practical realities. But these issues are not isolated barriers; they are symptoms of a wider lifecycle design that was built around male norms. At every stage of the agent journey i.e. selection, onboarding, training, day-to-day operations, and long-term sustainability, the system assumes a male agent: one with high mobility, ownership of formal retail space, access to documentation, and freedom to engage in public-facing commercial activity. When these assumptions go unquestioned, women appear “unsuitable,” when in reality the model itself is exclusionary.

The belief that “women don’t apply” simply mirrors limited entry pathways: providers recruit through male retail networks and offer training environments misaligned with women’s mobility and safety needs. Concerns about commercial viability assume that only market-center, high-footfall outlets are profitable; yet women-led outlets in community settings often deliver higher trust, deeper engagement, and lower churn, key drivers of sustainable profitability.

Liquidity challenges attributed to women arise from an operating model that depends on constant mobility. Once that model is adapted through micro-float credit lines, shared liquidity pools, or periodic cash-support women manage liquidity as effectively as men. And while onboarding women may require more tailored support at the outset, women agents consistently exhibit stronger compliance, lower misconduct, and greater operational stability, which reduce supervisory costs over time.

The evidence is consistent across markets: the perceived weaknesses of women agents are, in fact, weaknesses in a system that was never designed with women in mind. When the operating model shifts even slightly to reflect women’s realities, the business case strengthens rather than weakens.
Cross-country learning: What Bangladesh can actually borrow

Bangladesh is not alone in grappling with a stark gender gap in agent networks. Several countries have already experimented with ways to bring more women into frontline roles, and while contexts differ, three concrete lessons stand out from documented practice.

First, dedicated women-agent pipelines work when they are built through existing women’s networks.

In India’s BC Sakhi programme, state rural livelihood missions identify self-help group (SHG) members and train them as banking correspondents to serve their own communities. The “One Gram Panchayat, One BC Sakhi” mission in Uttar Pradesh has onboarded tens of thousands of women as village-level banking agents and channeled millions of transactions and significant commission income to them. This model shows that when recruitment is routed through women’s collectives, ot just existing retail shops, women agents emerge at scale and are able to serve as a trusted financial touchpoint in rural areas.

Second, access to working capital and liquidity support is a binding constraint but is a solvable problem.

Research on female cash-in, cash-out agents in Nigeria highlights that women’s ability to become or remain agents is heavily shaped by their access to startup capital and ongoing float, even when they have the skills and demand exists in their communities. The MicroSave study argues for bundled solutions: appropriate credit, business support, and liquidity tools tailored to women. Similarly, work on DFS agents in Indonesia shows that lending to agents using their digital transaction history as a basis represents a large, under-tapped opportunity and suggests that structured working-capital products for agents can strengthen network performance overall. While not always designed exclusively for women, these experiences demonstrate that capital and float are design variables, not fixed barriers: when providers and lenders intentionally create agent-focused credit solutions, entry for women becomes more feasible.

Third, there is evidence that women agents change how customers use and trust digital finance.

Experimental and observational work from African markets shows that women often express higher levels of trust when interacting with female agents and may be more willing to share information or seek help in such settings. Studies on agent banking find that women appear more willing to engage with other women in transactional settings, suggesting that the availability of female agents can increase comfort and uptake among female customers. These findings are consistent with global work on women’s digital financial inclusion, which emphasises that representation at the frontline is a key factor in moving from account ownership to active, confident usage.

Taken together, these experiences do not offer a single template that Bangladesh can copy, but they do point to three robust design principles:
•    build women-agent pipelines through women’s organisations and livelihood networks;
•    treat working capital and liquidity as solvable design problems, not reasons to exclude women; and
•    recognise that women agents can materially shift trust and usage patterns, especially for women customers.

Policy roadmap: Building a gender-inclusive agent network for Bangladesh

Bangladesh can break the <3% barrier in women’s MFS agents, but only with a coordinated shift in policy, provider design, and ecosystem partnerships. Three strategic levers matter most.

1. Regulatory realignment: Introduce gender-responsive MFS agent guidelines, require sex-disaggregated agent reporting, and extend the spirit of the agent-banking mandate to digital channels. Simplify KYC and licensing for home-adjacent women-run outlets and incentivise providers through supervisory nudges tied to network diversity, safety, and service quality.

2. Provider-level design shifts: Recruit through women-focused networks i.e. MFIs, NGOs, SHGs rather than male retail channels. Deploy gender-sensitive training, safe training venues, and community-based outlet models. Introduce agent working-capital tools (micro-float credit lines, shared liquidity pools) and redesign incentives to reward trust, compliance, and customer retention.

3. Ecosystem investments: Fund district-scale demonstration pilots, blended-finance guarantees for women-agent float, along with digital- and business-literacy pathways. Partner with women-centric MFIs to identify, onboard, and mentor women agents at scale.

A gender-inclusive agent network is not a social add-on; it is core digital infrastructure for Bangladesh’s next stage of financial inclusion.

Rebuilding inclusion from the frontline

Bangladesh’s digital finance journey shows that access alone does not produce inclusion; the architecture of participation matters. Women are central to the digital economy as users and earners yet structurally absent from the frontline. Rebalancing this requires redesigning recruitment, capital support, and incentives so that women can participate not as exceptions, but as a standard part of the agent network.

This article was first published on “The business standard” platform on 18th December 2025.