Fintech solutions for women and their impact

Genesis conducted research and prepared a paper that synthesised which financial technology solutions existed for women and their impact on women’s economic empowerment.

The report took into consideration the evidence of the advances gained by financial innovation and a deeper look at how these benefits accrue by gender. A framework for conceptualising the gender dimensions of financial innovation was presented as well as suggested avenues for further research and engagement.

The overall finding was that fintech innovation had a positive but limited impact on the lives of women because these solutions continued to be gender-blind and were not tailored to cater for the specific context of women in SSA.

As a result, women continued to face more barriers to accessing financial services compared with men. Based on these findings, we suggested that the supply of financial services was not by itself the panacea for women’s financial inclusion. Ultimately there needs to be a more holistic approach that not only addresses the design of products, but also the specific constraints that women face at the macro, meso, and micro level of the ecosystem.