Women's World Banking

10/08/2026

Expanding women’s economic opportunities starts with understanding the realities of their daily lives. In Indonesia, unpaid care responsibilities and subsistence practices can shape how low-income women engage with programs designed to strengthen their financial resilience.

Women’s World Banking and the Central Bank of Indonesia, examined how a group-based program supporting low-income communities responds to the needs of women running microbusinesses.

Read the report for practical recommendations on how to:
• Account for care responsibilities and local expectations about women’s roles when planning programs.
• Create opportunities for women to lead and help make business decisions within their groups.
• Measure whether women benefit economically, using data reported separately for women and men.

Women’s World Banking the Central Bank of Indonesia incorporated these recommendations into revisions to the program’s guidelines.

🔗 Read the report in English or Bahasa Indonesia. Link in the comments.

10/05/2026

Ready to drive change through inclusive tech policy?

Applications are open for Women’s World Banking’s 2027 Tech Policy Learning Lab! Join us April-September for a blended program with the Global Center for Sustainable Digital Finance for policymakers, regulators, and supervisors.

The 2026 cohort translated learning into action with 94% reporting greater confidence in governing and regulating emerging digital financial services technologies.

Join expert-led online learning and an in-person residency at the Global Center for Sustainable Digital Finance in Zurich to help shape safer, more inclusive financial systems.

Apply by November 30 via the link in comments!

Tech Policy Learning Lab is made possible through support from our funding partner, SECO Economic Cooperation and Development.

09/30/2026

Building women’s financial resilience requires more than responding after a crisis. It requires a connected system of protection that helps women prepare for shocks, receive timely support, recover without losing productive assets, and continue investing in their livelihoods.

Women’s World Banking, Ripple, and P**a have partnered to launch Harnessing Technology for Women’s Financial Resilience in Uganda, a pilot supporting approximately 3,000 smallholder farmers in Uganda’s refugee and host communities, with a focus on women.

The partnership combines Women’s World Banking’s expertise in designing inclusive financial solutions and measuring women’s financial resilience, P**a’s parametric insurance capabilities, and Ripple’s digital asset payment technology.

The pilot is built around three priorities:

• Deliver timely and accessible protection. When predefined agricultural, health, or life shocks occur, eligible beneficiaries can receive payouts in Uganda shillings through the mobile money channels they already use and trust.

• Reduce the cost and delay of responding to shocks. Automated, technology-enabled settlement will be tested as a way to improve the speed, transparency, and efficiency of payouts, while beneficiaries continue to interact only with mobile money.

• Build evidence for wider adoption and scale. Using Women’s World Banking’s Women Economic Empowerment Barometer, the pilot will assess changes in women’s ability to manage shocks, their confidence in financial decision-making, and their control over household resources.

This initiative also creates an opportunity for strategic partners to contribute to the evidence, partnerships, and investment that can help advance women-centred, shock-responsive financial solutions from pilot to broader adoption across humanitarian and financial systems.

Together, we can help women farmers move from absorbing repeated shocks to building lasting financial resilience and economic opportunity.

Read the full announcement here: https://bit.ly/47s8V5q

Kampala, Uganda, 31 Aug 2026: Women’s World Banking, a global nonprofit advancing women’s economic opportunity, is launching a new pilot with Ripple, which

09/28/2026

Building climate and financial resilience of women entrepreneurs requires a connected system of solutions that helps them anticipate risks, absorb shocks, recover quickly, adapt their businesses, and continue growing.

On the sidelines of and Climate Week, we convened Resilience by Design: Protecting Women’s Livelihoods from Climate and Economic Shocks, a private roundtable bringing together leaders from finance, philanthropy, and development to explore how financial systems can better serve women facing growing climate and economic disruption.

Three priorities emerged:
- 1. Climate resilience starts long before a crisis. Savings, digital payments, financial capability, and trusted community channels help women prepare and build stronger financial foundations.
- 2. Protection must be practical and accessible. Insurance, emergency liquidity, flexible credit, and rapid support can help women absorb losses and recover without sacrificing their livelihoods.
- 3. Climate-smart finance can create a pathway to growth. Climate-informed lending, adaptation finance, and alternative data can help women entrepreneurs invest, rebuild, and strengthen their businesses.

The conversation featured welcome remarks from Mary Ellen Iskenderian on climate and financial resilience, Pallavi Madhok presenting early learnings from our PayPal-supported work in India, and Harsha Rodrigues moderating the peer exchange on the evidence, partnerships, and investment approaches needed to take women-centered resilience solutions to scale.

Women’s World Banking will continue advancing this agenda through its 5R Climate Resilience Stack and the forthcoming Climate Readiness Index and Climate Resilience Framework. With donor and partner support, we can design solutions that protect women’s livelihoods and advance their long-term economic opportunity globally.

Stay tuned to learn more about our work on climate!

09/24/2026

Around the world, women spend approximately 25% more of their lives in poor health than men, limiting their ability to work, run businesses, save, invest, and care for their families, according to the McKinsey Health Institute. Yet closing the women’s health gap could add at least $1 trillion to the global economy annually.

In the latest episode of Making Finance Work for Women, Sonja Kelly, PhD speaks with Abimbola Adebakin, Founder of Advantage Health Africa, and Cristiane Lourenço of Bayer Foundation about the entrepreneurs working to close that gap.

Through myMedicines, Abimbola is helping women and families access quality medicines across Nigeria, tackling a challenge that is not about whether solutions exist, but whether they reach the people who need them.

Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts!

09/18/2026

India has built one of the world’s most successful digital payments ecosystems with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The next addressable market is onboarding 200 million women onto UPI.

At the Global Fintech Fest held in Mumbai, Women’s World Banking unveiled the extension of our partnership with the National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) – the UPI for Her 2.0 project, now rolled out with the Rajasthan Gramin Bank, a regional rural bank predominant in the western part of the country, to take digital financial services to women users, entrepreneurs, and merchants in deeper rural communities.

The project has revealed important takeaways for fintechs and financial institutions:

1. Women are a heterogeneous group with varying levels of digital financial skills, capabilities, and confidence. It is, important to design products keeping these differentiated realities in mind.

2. Initial support in onboarding, building digital financial capabilities, and troubleshooting ensures that women become active payments users. Women local community leaders can be nurtured as partners for on-ground support.

3. Onboarding women business owners on payments apps must be complemented with transparent information and clearly explaining to them the benefits of becoming a digital merchant.

We congratulate our partners on this feat on this extended programme. The link to the UPI For Her report is in the comments.

09/04/2026

Looking for an interesting way to start your weekend?

Want to learn what it takes for women entrepreneurs to build climate resilience when rising costs, unreliable infrastructure and extreme weather threaten their livelihoods?

In the latest episode of Making Finance Work for Women, Sonja Kelly speaks with Roikhanatun Nafi'ah, Founder and CEO of Crustea Indonesia, whose journey began in a shrimp farming community in Indonesia, where she witnessed firsthand the challenges faced by small scale fish and shrimp farmers.

Today, through solar powered aeration and smart monitoring technology, Crustea Indonesia is helping farmers boost productivity, lower costs and reduce emissions.

In this clip, Roikhanatun shares a message for financial institutions, investors and policymakers on how to support women entrepreneurs to strengthen climate resilience and create economic opportunity for millions.

Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts!

09/03/2026

Many women entrepreneurs are ready to grow. Financial systems must be designed intentionally to meet them where they are.

At a recent convening with our partners in India – HSBC, SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India), and United Way Mumbai – we reflected on learnings from the Prayaas Individual Enterprise Scheme (IES), a model developed by SIDBI and Women's World Banking India to bring formal credit to rural women entrepreneurs through trusted, women led community institutions.

Early results show strong demand, fast turnaround times, and many women accessing formal credit for the first time. The viability and scale across the country are possible and could mobilize relevant credit for millions of women.

Key insights from the Prayaas IES experience included:

1. Trusted local institutions can expand access to formal credit for first time borrowers. By partnering with community institutions that understand women entrepreneurs and their businesses, Prayaas IES reached women often underserved by traditional lending channels.

2. Women entrepreneurs value credit that is relevant, accessible, and timely. In the pilot, 80% of loans were processed within two weeks, showing that community based lending can combine local trust with efficient credit delivery.

3. With the right training, tools, and field support, community institutions can become a sustainable last mile model for financial services and a platform for other financial and non financial services.

4. The opportunity to scale is significant. India has 19.2 million women running nano and micro enterprises, and 43% report unmet credit demand. Closing this gap will require models designed “for women, by women”.

Thank you to our partners and those in attendance who contributed to a thoughtful discussion on unlocking the next frontier of credit for women entrepreneurs.

Read the findings from the Prayaas IES project in our report - link in the comments!

08/27/2026

Climate resilience can sound abstract. For millions of women, it is anything but.

Growing up in a shrimp farming community in Indonesia, Roikhanatun Nafi'ah saw firsthand how climate pressures could devastate livelihoods. Shrimp mortality of more than 50%. Rising energy bills. Unreliable power. Profits disappearing.

“This is not just my story. It’s the story of millions.”

Today, as founder and CEO of Crustea Indonesia, Roikhanatun is working to change that reality, using solar-powered aeration and smart monitoring technology to help small-scale fish and shrimp farmers improve productivity, lower costs, and reduce emissions.

In the latest episode of Making Finance Work for Women, Sonja Kelly speaks with Roikhanatun about what climate resilience looks like from the perspective of the people living it every day, and what and their communities need to build greater financial security in a changing climate.

Listen to the full conversation wherever you subscribe to podcasts!

08/21/2026

Pastoralist families in Kenya who depend on livestock for their livelihoods face increasing risks from climate change. While livestock insurance helps cover losses when animals are harmed, what happens when a household member is injured?

That's why we developed a life and health insurance solution for pastoralists in Kenya, alongside Zep-Re and Britam. Named after two Swahili words meaning “Protect the Pastoralist”, Linda Mfugaji offers an important lesson for inclusive insurance.

Our latest blog explores what 508 pastoralists across Kenya have taught us about strengthening climate and health resilience for vulnerable households through the program so far. Read via the link in comments!