06/05/2026
At the recent Annual Convening, our Regional Director, Natalia Wills, participated in the workshop, "Financial Innovation and Gender: Designing Solutions to Improve Women’s Access to Credit."
Through rich discussions around real-world challenges, participants explored how financial institutions can better serve women through intentional product design and innovation.
Natalia shared three key takeaways:
🔹 Leadership commitment is essential. Successful gender-intentional financial products require strong buy-in from senior management, institutional leadership, and boards to ensure that gender considerations are embedded in strategy, investment decisions, and organizational culture.
🔹 Design from women’s lived experiences. Effective products are built through women-centered design approaches that start with understanding women's needs, preferences, constraints, and aspirations. This also requires recognizing that women are not a homogeneous group and incorporating an intersectional lens that considers factors such as age, ethnicity, disability, geography, migration status, and income level.
🔹 Adopt an innovation and learning mindset. Product development should be an iterative process of testing, learning, adapting, and refining solutions based on user feedback and real-world experience rather than relying on assumptions.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this important conversation on advancing women’s financial inclusion and expanding access to credit.