EFInA collaborated with Data2X and Financial Alliance for Women to deliver a workshop on sex-disaggregated data for improved women’s financial inclusion. The objective of the workshop was to highlight insights on how Financial Service Providers (FSPs) can use sex-disaggregated data to develop and roll out products to key target groups, especially to open up new customer segments. The workshop also helped to capture stakeholders’ perspectives on the necessary levers needed to improve the collection of sex-disaggregated data in the financial sector.

The workshop presented a platform to disseminate key findings of recent research that ConsumerCentrix conducted for Data2X on sex-disaggregated supply-side data in Nigeria. A major insight is that sex-disaggregated data can help to catalyse actions to promote women’s financial inclusion and facilitate the development of women’s financial inclusion champions. The supply-side sex-disaggregated data has helped to understand gaps and find opportunities. Some key challenges identified in disaggregating supply side data include a conspicuous lack of understanding of the value of the data, which is also not being analysed to its full potential.

There is an exciting new momentum that is emerging in Nigeria to address women’s financial exclusion. EFInA supported the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Financial Inclusion Technical Committee to launch the Framework for Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion in September 2020. One of the strategic imperatives is to “mandate the development of systems of gender-disaggregated data collection to meet the needs of financial services providers and government.”

The state of women’s financial inclusion report has also shown that leading banks are beginning to recognise the women’s market as a key strategic opportunity that would enable them to grow their customer base and increase profitability while addressing corporate social responsibility objectives. The banks’ interest in the market is demonstrated through a number of newly launched women-focused propositions. However, most women’s market propositions have not reached scale as banks are still looking for commercially viable models.

It has become clear that the availability of high-quality gender disaggregated demand side data, such as the data found in EFInA’s Access to Financial Services in Nigeria Survey, has contributed to creating awareness among FSPs about the untapped opportunity in the women’s market and highlighted the need for women-focused policy actions to address the gender gap on the part of the regulator. To move the industry beyond women’s market pilots, there is therefore an urgent need to improve the quality and availability (from manual to automated reporting) of supply-side data to enable FSPs iterate solutions toward scalable and commercially viable propositions.