Promoting gender-intelligent banking: Designing financial services for women entrepreneurs

• Dec 28, 2023
• 2 min

MSC conducted a study of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh to understand their lives. The study tracked all financial and nonfinancial transactions of about 500 women entrepreneurs. Insights from the study helped develop gender-centric financial products for the country’s women entrepreneurs.

Our goal was to enhance understanding of how women entrepreneurs manage their businesses. Specifically, we worked with financial service providers to create financial products that meet their unique needs.

Through this research, MSC took a comprehensive view of female business owners’ experiences, including their financial, business management, digital, and personal lives. We used the diary methodology for data collection and collected additional data through regular surveys.

We partnered with financial service providers (FSPs) to cocreate gender-intentional financial products that met the specific needs of the women entrepreneurs.

Results

The research revealed significant similarities between male and female business owners in management practices, operational confidence, and growth priorities. It confirmed that as business managers, women are as capable as men. We documented unique behavioral and systemic challenges in business formalization and accessing formal credit.

Based on the project’s insights, our partners MTB and Bank Asia successfully codeveloped gender-intentional financial products. In its first year, the initiative generated a savings portfolio worth approximately BDT 2.5 million (USD 21,000). With a minimum loan size of BDT 200,000 (USD 1,675), the system was expected to facilitate an additional BDT 200 million (USD 1.68 million) in its first year.

This Gates Foundation-commissioned project empowered Bangladesh’s women entrepreneurs while supporting their growth and sustainability.

Latest insights from our side:

• • In small businesses, male and female business owners are more alike than we think
  • Enabling digital inclusion: Lessons learned from a field experiment to encourage women entrepreneurs to adopt digital tools
  • Tracking Success: The Women Business Diaries Project
  • From surviving to thriving: How stakeholders can meet the unmet needs of Bangladesh’s women entrepreneurs
  • Offering support where it matters most: Insights from assessing ecosystem needs and their impact on women entrepreneurs
  • Gender-intelligent banking (part 2): Small changes, big wins: How small changes by FSPs can result in big wins
  • Gender-intelligent banking (part 1): A practitioner’s perspective on designing financial services for women
  • Insights to innovations: Designing financial services for women entrepreneurs
  • Formalizing businesses in Bangladesh: How women entrepreneurs see the trade licensing process
  • The use of digital platforms for business—insights from Women’s Business Diaries in Bangladesh
  • Unpacking the ground realities—what are we beginning to learn about women-owned businesses in Bangladesh?

Click here to access MSC’s work on financial diaries research across the world.