Resource Guide for FSPS for WE Finance Code Action Commitments

A comprehensive playbook for conducting quantitative surveys alongside selected ethnographic interviews designed to explore the barriers and decision-making journeys experienced by female entrepreneurs in a specific country, and the opportunities to invest in the women’s market.

The report and its accompanying toolkit offer actionable guidance for financial institutions, investors, program designers, and donors to better understand and serve the distinct needs of WSMEs in emerging markets. It includes practical guides and tools across six steps—from analyzing the WSME landscape to customer segmentation, service demand assessment, solution design, and building the business case.

A tool that provides FSPs with a quick, high-level overview of the market opportunity for women-led MSME finance, estimating market size and profitability, while also offering insights into the local market context and constraints for women entrepreneurs.

This Guide provides practical guidance on understanding the NME landscape through market segmentation and sizing. It walks users through how to take a gender smart approach to identify underserved markets, tailor products and services to diverse needs, and foster inclusivity, ultimately driving growth and improving social impact.

INVEST comprises a set of knowledge products and tools to support banks, funders, and supporters through the process of understanding SME markets and developing profitable value propositions. Includes a set of 8 tools and resources for financial institutions that can be used sequentially or independently to support SME banking research & diagnostics, pilot & refinement and roll-out.

The report and its accompanying toolkit offer actionable guidance for financial institutions, investors, program designers, and donors to better understand and serve the distinct needs of WSMEs in emerging markets. It includes practical guides and tools across six steps—from analyzing the WSME landscape to customer segmentation, service demand assessment, solution design, and building the business case.

An online database that provides a curated list of financial and non-financial products and services specifically designed or adapted for women-led MSMEs. It Includes 19 WMSME product and service categories profiling 80+ examples from FSPs. Examples are organized into four types: Policy and Regulation; Financial Products and Services; Non-financial Products and Services; and Bundled Packages. Each product and service is also mapped to specific categories of challenges women entrepreneurs face in accessing finance. Users can filter results by the main challenge addressed, country or territory, and key types to quickly identify relevant examples.

The Strive Women Playbook is a resource to help practitioners design financial products and services for women entrepreneurs. It includes guidance on how to do women-centered design, with links to more than 20 tools, such as tools to analyze a financial product for women clients and product development frameworks. In each tool users will find women-centered design checks to support data collection, feedback and decision-making.

This tool focuses on the “how” of women-centered design, offering a step-by-step roadmap for FSPs to implement this methodology within their organizations. It guides users through five phases of the women-centered design methodology and includes relevant templates to implement those phases into their processes.

This guide presents a gender-lens analytical framework that lenders can use to determine whether lending decisions and outcomes in their portfolios differ by gender and, if so, how. For lenders using credit scoring models, the guide presents different gender-intentional techniques for adjusting their credit scoring models. It also presents implementation strategies—such as setting different decision threshold policies for women and men.

This open-source 6-hour video course equips product owners and data scientists with the tools they need to address bias within credit evaluation processes at financial service providers. Within the course, participants learn to deploy algorithmic solutions to rectify biases in credit evaluations, specifically focusing on the high-impact issue of mistakenly rejecting creditworthy applicants, often due to biases ingrained in evaluation models themselves.

The toolkit helps practitioners understand the financing needs, barriers, and opportunities for WMSMEs across their lifecycle (start-up, growth, expansion, maturity) , learn validated strategies to address these barriers, and access tools to design, monitor, and measure impactful financial solutions.

This toolkit serves as a vital resource for navigating the complexities of gender bond initiatives, offering practical guidance, case studies, and strategic insights to stakeholders involved in the issuance and investment of gender bonds within the African context.

This report is based on a survey of 34 banks worldwide on their approach to and measurement of nonfinancial services, with a focus on their offerings to businesses owned by women. It examines the benefits to financial institutions of integrating non-financial services that can help mitigate barriers faced by WMSMEs in accessing finance and incorporate them into a women-focused SME banking proposition.

This toolkit is a comprehensive, practical "How-to" Guide for advancing women’s financial inclusion. Guidance and examples of non-financial products and services for women customers are found in the Project Ideas section and Linking Services section.

This publication details the role of gender norms that constrain women’s financial capability, provides an overview of women’s financial capability initiatives, including classroom-based initiatives, technology-led financial education, and high-touch financial capability approaches, and includes recommendations on how to ensure women are meaningfully and successfully engaged with financial services.

This report offers guidance to implement evidence-based business development services that boost small business growth and job creation. Together with an accompanying toolkit, it offers guidance on how to implement dimensions of SCALE, proven to increase effectiveness, and as a result, boost small and growing businesses revenues and job creation.