Blogs
8 January 2024
Addressing Asia and the Pacific's urgent need for affordable, green housing is vital for women's resilience and sustainable development. It requires inclusive policies, awareness, gender-sensitive financing, and technology-enhanced access to financing.
20 January 2023
By Sabine Spohn, Kavita Sherchan and Joanna Romero
Digital financial services have big potential to close the gender gaps experienced by women-led micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (WSMEs) in accessing finance. This DevAsia insight piece outlines the ways that digital finance enhances WSMEs’ financial inclusion, the benefits gained by financial institutions serving WSMEs, the structural and cultural barriers to women’s digital financial inclusion, as well as examples of ADB-supported banks that serve WSMEs through digital services.
20 January 2023
By Gisela Garzon de la Roza and Joanna Romero
Gender bonds can scale up women’s access to finance and promote gender equality at the same time. This DevAsia insight piece explains how.
By Dean Caire, Sabine Spohn
10 August 2022
A great credit score is crucial to secure loans. But traditional credit scoring models put many women at a disadvantage. It’s time for a new model.
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Maintaining a good credit score is vitally important for accessing finance in much of the world. Credit scoring models study past relationships between borrower characteristics and behaviors and loan repayment to predict how today’s borrowers will repay.
Most banks’ historic data was collected in ‘traditional’ credit underwriting processes—based on the analysis of financial statements, credit history and collateral, as well subjective judgements of the borrower’s perceived ‘character’.
12 August 2021
The pandemic has damaged economies and derailed livelihoods. Poor communities have suffered, with lockdowns and lost income exposing them to even deeper poverty. Women have experienced some of the most extreme impacts. Even before the pandemic they lacked access to basic financial services and knowledge that can help people to survive in difficult times.
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ADB recently launched the Women’s Finance Exchange to promote awareness about how women can improve their finances and livelihoods. Christine Engstrom, who heads the financial institutions division of ADB’s private sector operations department, says the pandemic has been particularly trying for the region’s women. She explains how the Women’s Finance Exchange can help to ensure nobody is left behind as countries recover.