It’s a frequent sentiment amongst monetary establishments that goes one thing like: “We’d like to serve low-income girls, however it’s simply too expensive.” This assumption that catering to girls prospects inherently undermines profitability has lingered for years. However is it actually true?
We explored this in our analysis and located that almost two-thirds of monetary companies suppliers (FSPs) who participated in our survey disagreed that providing merchandise to low-income prospects at scale is “too costly”. But, regardless of this shifting notion, many establishments nonetheless battle to construct a enterprise case for women-centric merchandise. However why the disconnect?
The reply lies in product design limitations, the place inner blind spots and biases can enhance prices. On this weblog put up, we unpack these product design limitations by the “value fantasy,” exploring how a scarcity of gender knowledge and perception feeds the notion that serving girls isn’t viable, and the way that fantasy, in flip, results in suboptimal product designs that maintain prices excessive and uptake low. The reality we discovered is that girls could be a worthwhile market–if merchandise are designed proper.
Let’s break down why the “too costly” narrative persists and easy methods to flip it round.
The “value fantasy” and gaps in gender knowledge
Anybody who’s labored within the monetary inclusion house has heard this argument: “small stability accounts and micro-loans don’t repay.” Traditionally, girls had been thought-about prospects with low revenue margins who transact in tiny quantities, drive up service prices, and contribute little to the underside line. However our analysis uncovered a essential flaw in that considering. Most establishments lack the information to precisely measure girls’s profitability within the first place. Ladies’s World Banking’s business survey finds that two-thirds of establishments report amassing gender-disaggregated knowledge (GDD), however solely a little bit over half apply a gender lens when utilizing this knowledge for enterprise choices. With out clear gender knowledge, establishments miss out on a enterprise case for serving girls.
So, why does knowledge matter a lot? As a result of numbers usually inform a distinct story than mere assumptions. For instance, an in depth overview of over 90 Ladies’s World Banking advisory options tasks performed between 2017 and 2024 revealed that girls prospects can have increased buyer lifetime worth (CLV) than males when merchandise actually meet their wants. Ladies are sometimes extra dependable savers and debtors, which suggests long-term income can outweigh increased upfront prices. But when an establishment isn’t monitoring utilization, compensation, and retention by gender, these advantages keep invisible. Briefly, the underutilization of gender knowledge reinforces the value fantasy and creates a vicious cycle. So, breaking this cycle is essential, and it begins with treating gender knowledge as greater than a compliance box-tick. Whereas almost 40% of FSPs report setting targets or dedicating groups to girls prospects, solely 26% incorporate girls’s views into product design (e.g., by way of consumer analysis or women-centered design methodology). Until FSPs actively analyze how girls prospects use merchandise and the place ache factors or drop-offs happen, they’ll maintain defaulting to one-size-fits-all designs and miss the methods girls may very well be worthwhile with a distinct strategy.
On the flip aspect, establishments which have embraced gender knowledge are seeing outcomes. For instance, one of many FSPs that acknowledged the significance of GDD is Lendingkart, a fintech firm in India. They gather a sturdy gender-disaggregated dataset on their prospects and analyze it by a gender lens. This strategy enabled borrowing from certified girls candidates at decrease value and strengthened belief with potential girls prospects—demonstrating how gender knowledge can drive each institutional efficiency and buyer uptake.
A number of lacking items in product design
Even with higher knowledge, solely 26% of suppliers in our business survey stated they incorporate girls’s views in product design. And, this isn’t about gender-siloed merchandise (like a particular “pink” product); it’s about on a regular basis design decisions. These are issues like an overdraft product would possibly fail girls if it doesn’t contemplate that some girls have irregular revenue flows, requiring extra versatile compensation schedules. Or a advertising marketing campaign would possibly flop as a result of it makes use of imagery and language that don’t communicate to girls’s wants.
Listed here are some examples. Ladies’s World Banking advisory venture with Financial institution of Baroda in India discovered that girls with primary Jan Dhan accounts weren’t utilizing them to avoid wasting. We dug additional and discovered girls felt their “small” deposits weren’t welcome on the financial institution. The product wasn’t inherently flawed, however the positioning and frontline interactions signaled to girls that they didn’t belong. Different comparable tales are that if advertising algorithms or frontline workers inadvertently favor males, fewer girls even enter the funnel to scale a product. Or, if the onboarding course of had been onerous (e.g., a number of paperwork requiring a husband’s signature or a number of ID proofs), girls usually tend to abandon the applying, leaving accounts underutilized.
So, is it that girls are expensive to serve, or that merchandise have been expensive by institutional design? Our findings counsel the latter. Take into account digital monetary companies the place many suppliers assumed girls “weren’t ” in cell banking, however in reality, interfaces and help weren’t tailor-made to girls’s decrease digital familiarity. The end result? Ladies stayed away, and suppliers noticed low adoption (which they interpreted as unprofitable to pursue). In Pakistan, a Ladies’s World Banking venture with JazzCash tackled this by introducing feminine brokers and simplified cell pockets onboarding for girls. The end result was a spike in girls’s enrollment with 566 new prospects, 42% of whom had been girls. This reveals that when merchandise account for girls’s wants and capabilities, girls reply with uptake and loyalty.
Realigning the enterprise case
So, is it too costly to serve low-income girls prospects? Not for those who do it deliberately. Sure, it’d require upfront funding, corresponding to amassing gender knowledge, conducting consumer analysis, coaching workers, or adjusting merchandise. However these investments trump the true limitations (knowledge gaps, design misfits, belief deficits) fairly than papering them over. And the proof suggests they repay. By incorporating these into the establishment’s enterprise technique and operations, suppliers can obtain each monetary sustainability and ladies’s inclusion. The underside line: girls symbolize an unlimited, underserved market, and designing merchandise with girls in thoughts is the important thing to unlocking it.
To study extra about Ladies’s World Banking’s analysis on limitations to girls’s monetary inclusion, keep tuned for the launch of the microsite coming on the finish of March 2026. The microsite consists of the complete write-up and exemplars on limitations to girls’s monetary inclusion.
This analysis was made doable with funding from the Gates Basis.
