10th December 2020

Making Finance Work for Women

The two-day virtual summit gathered industry leaders and practitioners as they looked at how to take action towards financial inclusion and improve financial resilience for women. The Summit consisted of interactive sessions, plenary panels, and global research on topics ranging from the widening gender gap, crisis recovery, wage digitisation, leadership and diversity, gender lens investing, G2P payments, and more. In attendance were over 300 thought leaders from the financial services, regulatory, policymaking and technology communities.

During the summit, the four finalists of the second annual Making Finance Work for Women Fintech Innovation Challenge were announced. The finalists, chosen from a record-breaking pool of competitive and diverse applicants, represent an exciting new wave of innovative solutions designed to support low-income women’s economic empowerment and financial inclusion. This year’s finalists were: Boost Capital, Mujer Financiera, myAgro, and Tyme.

The judges selected two Grand Prize Winners: Tyme and myAgro. They will compete as finalists in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Global FinTech Hackcelerator (powered by KPMG Digital Village) during the Singapore FinTech Festival in December 2020. They will also be fast-tracked to receive a MAS Proof-of-Concept Grant worth up to S$200,000 and compete for a S$50,000 cash prize. The Grand Prize Winners will also receive tuition coverage for two participants in Women’s World Banking’s next Leadership and Diversity for Innovation Program, which equips senior executives in emerging markets with the skills to successfully serve low-income women and advance women leaders within their institutions.

“I was inspired by the quality and sheer number of applications this year,” noted Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking. “Low-income women have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID crisis, facing higher rates of unemployment, bearing an outsized burden of child care and other household responsibilities, and even confronting unprecedented levels of domestic violence. This year’s applicants – of which 62% (74 solutions) were co-founded and/or had women in a C-suite position – left me full of hope for the future of the role that fintech can play in women’s financial inclusion and, ultimately, their economic empowerment.”