Women's World Banking 2018-2022

In relation to the strategy objectives, the main goal of the contribution was to make strives towards WEE. However, it should be noted that a significant amount of synergies exist in relation to the other strategy objective PSD, due to the domain of work that WWB inhabits. Notably, Women's World Banking executes this through 4 different workstreams. Women's World Banking's Vertical Areas of Work: (1) Regional Client Services - WWB's regional offices are responsible for the implementation of their geographical strategies through advisory and advocacy support to local FSPs as well as providing support to policymakers and regulators. (2) Global Advocacy and Influence - this workstream includes policy research, marketing and communications, financial industry, network advocacy and the Women's Digital Financial Inclusion Hub (WDFI Advocacy Hub). Policies aim to generate inclusive gendered policy initiaties, financial industry and network advocacy. The WDFI Advocacy Hub is a partnership created with UNCDF. (3) Global Shared Services - consists of WWB's organisational support functions such as resources, performance enhancing systems, HR, etc. The goal is to support global and regional activities and ensuring organisational efficiency and effective implementation of projects. (4) Women's World Banking Asset Management (WAM) - the last stream consists of Emerging Markets Fund I & II which focuses on gender lens and impact investing. Through directing capital to inclusive finance institutions that target gender diversity and serving the unbanked women's market. Sida's Strategy Objectives: Women's Economic Empowerment By the end of 2022, Women's World Banking's Global Network (the Network), grew to 63 FSPs, operating across 34 emerging markets, with a total outreach to more than 159 million women. The network members are implementing, catalyzing and advocacy partners that help WWB achieve their strategic objectives. Four new Network members joined the Network in 2022: Access Bank Mozambique, Access Bank South Africa, Annapurna Finance India and Dot MFB Nigeria. In relation to WWB's first strategic objective, in 2022 they completed 9 research engagements on the financial needs and experiences of women MSMEs, refugees, salaried women, migrant workers, women leaders in financial services and women refugees. Since 2018 they engaged more than 20,300 women in 83 research engagements, including outcomes evaluations, and published 25 research reports and insights notes. Other topics included have been Bias in lending and Forcibly displaced women (Ukraine). WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 8, 15, 69-76, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M2]; [GLOB/NORM] In relation to WWB's fourth strategic objective, Women's World Banking CEO Mary Ellen Iskenderian and WWB published the book, 'There's Nothing Micro About a Billion Women' in 2022 providing a platform to raise the organization's profile to a wide range of audiences. In the latter part of 2022, WWB´s flagship biennial global event (the Making Finance Work for Women - MFWW) summit was supposed to be held but it had to be delayed and instead took place in May 2023. The MFWW Summit is the flagship convening event, bringing together financial inclusion leaders, including policymakers, FSPs, government regulators, philanthropic donors etc, from around the globe to tackle important issues and accelerate women´s economy. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 49, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M2]; [GLOB/NORM] In 2022, WWB drafted Indonesia's Women's Financial Inclusion Strategy along with Indonesia's Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection, in an effort to sustain WWB's continued cooperation with Indonesia's government in relation to their G20 Presidency. Specifically, WWB provided input on two priority areas on the strategy, improving literacy and consumer protection and improving digital financial products and services. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 22, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M2]; [NAT/INST] Furthermore, WWB conducted workshop's with the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Cambodia to evaluate their strategic priorities in promoting women's financial inclusion, focusing on; enhancing women's access to finanicial products and services, encouraging women's engagement with financial products and services as well as building women's digital financial capabilities. Their subsequent launch was attended by 40 regulators, FSPs and industry stakeholders. Research shows that in poverty stricken contexts, state-owned banks are typically more trustworthy and reliable, as their implementing financial inclusion strategies is seen as less risky. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 22, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M2]; [NAT/INST] WWB in cooperation with Bank of Baroda (public sector bank in India) developed a savings-led engagement tool to increase financial inclusion among low-income women in India. Piloted in 2020, as of the end of 2022, the digital solution has been rolled out across 14 geographically diverse states with an outreach of 12.4 million customers (7 million women), with 4.3 million customers (2.4 million women) actively engaged. The solution's core elements, which include reaching and welcoming customers, making engagement with the bank relatable and rewarding and developing an efficient channel to engage with the customer, were retained, tested, and refined in multiple local languages. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 29, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M2]; [ACT/TARG] Sida's Strategy Objectives: Private Sector Development Regarding the strategy goal private sector development WWB undertook several projects pertaining to this objective. One particular workstream that contributes to Private Sector Development is the Women's World Banking Asset Management (WAM) stream. The 10-year term for Emerging Markets Fund I, a $50 million private equity fund, ended in January 2022. The Fund is fully invested in 10 portfolio companies in 8 countries and has exited six investments to date. The number of women reached by portfolio companies increased by an average of 101% during the holding period. Emerging Markets Fund II, launched in 2020, held its final closing in 2022 with a total fund size of $103.5 million. To date, Emerging Markets Fund II has closed 11 investments, investing a total of $58.8 million. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 42-43, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M3]; [GLOB/NORM] Through the Network, WWB delivered nine Network engagement events centered around a) supporting women-led MSMEs, b) effective women-centered product design, and c) climate change, and d) digital financial inclusion. Overall 84% of the Network members participated through these engagement offerings. In addition WWB introduced a new relationship management model that identified tangible actions that each Network member could take to drive women's financial inclusion and gender diversity. As a result, two Network members committed to serving more women customers with enhanced financial products. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 40, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M3]; [ACT/TARG] Through Emerging Markets Fund II, $5 million was invested in Tienda Pago - a Fin-Tech company operating in Mexico and Peru - with a mobile-based digital platform that provide short-term inventory loans to merchants in the Consumer Goods retail sector. The same fund invested in Iglo - an inclusive insurtech company operating across South East Asia, in total $8 million was invested in 2022. Similarly, $10 million was invested in Lulalend in December 2022, a leading South African fintech business who focuses on providing SMEs with fast and affordable access to credit. WWB 2018-2022, Core Funders Report 2022, s 45, DOX 17/000329-55]; [M3]; [ACT/TARG]

The overall objective of the Development intervention is: (1) to ensure that the largest number of un- and under-banked low-income women are served well with both existing and new financial products and services; and (2) Strengthen financial institutions through leadership development and build gender diversity within them. As this contribution is in the form of corefunding it necessitates the consideration of the overall goal of WWB. The organizational dashboard presents the following breakdown of the overall objective. Strategic objective 1: Build the evidence base to articulate how women are economically empowered when they access and choose to use financial services that meet their needs. Strategic objective 2: Influence governments in priority markets to invest in women leaders and implement policies and initiatives that promote womens financial inclusion. Strategic objective 3: Influence diverse financial service providers to invest in women leaders and financial solutions that are accessible to and used by women. Strategic objective 4: Expand credibility as a thought leader by amplifying our unique point of view and leading the conversation on emerging topics in womens financial inclusion. Operational objective 1: Maintain and strengthen organizational health and efficiency. Operational objective 2: Heighten focus on organizational performance and staff engagement to increase accountability and drive impact. Operational objective 3: Commit to regional expansion and maintain an agile organizational structure that enables closer connection with clients and partners. Strategy relevance: The support is assessed to contribute to the following strategy objectives: - WEE (80%) - PSD (20%) The ToC and portfolio analysis for the strategy objective WEE explicitly target women´s access to different financial systems and tools as an important result. The corresponding documents for the strategy objective PSD states the importance of access to financial services based on more equal opportunities. Channel for change: The primary channel through which the partnership is executed is directly to the target group given the close connection to the participating members of the network and their clients. Advocacy (based on research) and institutional development does only represent a smaller fraction.