PRESS RELEASE: Global Banking Alliance for Women Announces Partnership to Close Gender Data Gap in Finance

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

The Global Banking Alliance for Women (GBA) is proud to announce a partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Data2X to expand the collection and use of financial data on women in economies around the world. The commitment was announced this morning at an event in New York headlined by speakers Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michael R. Bloomberg, during a panel moderated by Chelsea Clinton. The initiative aims to close the gender data gap in the banking sector, leading to greater financial inclusion and empowerment of women.

Women around the world face a large access gap when it comes to the financial sector. There is an estimated $300 billion credit shortfall for women-owned micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies (McKinsey), largely due to a lack of quality data on the female economy. Increasing access to and use of sex-disaggregated data will solidify the business case for serving women, creating a commonsense business incentive for banks to target women as a market.

“The cost of lack of information can be high. In Latin America and the Caribbean, up to 70% of women-owned SMEs report unserved or underserved credit needs. Yet 85% of bankers surveyed think that women-owned SMEs are well-served by the banking system, despite the fact that most banks don’t collect and use gender-disaggregated data. This huge gap in perceptions between the suppliers and demanders of credit essentially stems from a data gap,” said Nancy Lee, General Manager of the IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund. “This initiative will help us address this gap. It will help banks reach new creditworthy clients and women entrepreneurs grow their businesses and create more jobs.”

Source: PR Newswire (link opens in a new window)

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