An Open Letter: Digital Financial Capability is critical to unlocking the power of women’s financial inclusion
The WDFI Advocacy Hub is committed to supporting women’s digital financial capability through our vast network of members – but we cannot do this work alone.
We need the collective help of governments, financial services providers (FSPs), and civil society organizations (CSOs) to pave the way for greater access to and usage of digital financial services.
When a woman is financially included, she has access to responsible financial and technological tools in her own name, engages with financial services in a way that meets her needs, and has opportunities to build resilience and grow her business. She passes on the benefits to her community through employment in her business, her children are more likely to stay in school, and she saves money to weather future economic shocks.
A critical enabler of financial inclusion is building digital financial capability (DFC), which gives women the knowledge to make informed choices and the skills to effectively use digital tools, and builds her trust in digital financial products and services. Improved digital financial capability can also motivate and enable the safe and beneficial use of financial services.
The Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion (WDFI) Advocacy Hub, an entity that unifies local, regional, and global stakeholders with the common objective of accelerating progress in women’s digital financial inclusion, believes that women’s capability to effectively use responsible digital financial services to achieve their financial goals is a stepping stone on the path to women having economic power.
In addition to affording women economic power, greater digital financial capability fosters increased customer engagement and instills more trust in the formal financial sector. The evidence from account activation solutions demonstrates that when DFC is embedded in digital financial services, customers are more engaged with those services. At Dutch-Bangla Bank Limited (DBBL) in Bangladesh, the solution increased the percentage of women customers doing a transaction independently by 76%. At Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) in Indonesia, average balances grew by 17x for beneficiaries who received the solution. This ultimately results in improved financial returns for financial services providers, creates new opportunities to serve an expanded and diversified range of customers, and enables governments and civil society organizations to achieve their financial inclusion objectives.
The WDFI Advocacy Hub is committed to supporting women’s digital financial capability through our vast network of members – but we cannot do this work alone. We need the collective help of governments, financial services providers (FSPs), and civil society organizations (CSOs) to pave the way for greater access to and usage of digital financial services.
Today, the WDFI Advocacy Hub is calling on these three groups to take the following important actions and catalyze building digital financial capability among women in the Global South.
Governments
Connect digital financial capability with national digital financial inclusion efforts
Partner with stakeholders and consult with women to understand critical “inflection points” at which consumers most need digital financial capability skills
Ensure appropriate FSP accountability mechanisms
Financial Services Providers
Design for Digital Financial Capability
Provide gender-sensitive onboarding opportunities
Set targets and track progress, using gender-disaggregated data
Civil Society Organizations
Prioritize and facilitate DFC training for women
Elevate client voices and perspectives
Identify and/or establish a diversity of women role models in the community
Join us — sign the letter
Working together, we can act to pave the way for digital financial capability. When women can use digital financial services, it uplifts families and entire communities. As more and more of the world embraces digital finance and DPI as the future, we must make sure that women are not left behind but rather build trust in and benefit from the opportunities they provide.