Financial Inclusion Week 2022

As part of the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Financial Inclusion Week 2022, Good Business Lab organised a virtual panel to tackle the exclusion of women from financial technologies, and the path forward.

Digital platforms have revolutionised economic access in the Global South. Yet, only 2.5% of women with access to formal bank accounts are using them to carry out transactions. This exclusion is not incidental but structural.

Can vulnerable populations like migrant working women be brought into the fold of digital finance? What role does design and technology play in this process? Panelists spoke on these and many other questions regarding access to financial technologies. They also presented possible solutions that can be effective and scalable. discussed bottlenecks in delivering fin-tech (financial technology) products to women and scaling financial mobilization in gender-fragmented contexts.

The panel brought together perspectives from research, social enterprise, and policy circles. They unpacked how trust is critical to women’s financial activity, and how fin-tech solutions along with public policy must prioritise women’s needs by treating them as active stakeholders in the financial arena.

Panelists: 

Halima Iqbal, CEO and Founder, Oraan 

Halima Iqbal is the CEO and founder at Oraan. A former investment banker and consultant with 8 years of experience, Halima moved back to Pakistan in 2017 after a decade in North America with a drive to make finance inclusive and simple for the underserved millions.

Kazim Rizvi, Founding Director, The Dialogue  

Kazim Rizvi is the Founding Director of The Dialogue, a public policy think-tank based out of New Delhi. An important voice in India's tech policy ecosystem, Kazim works on the intersection of technology, policy and society, with a focus on evidence-based research and discourse.

Smit Gade, Associate Director, Research and Data, Good Business Lab

Smit Gade currently serves as Associate Director at Good Business Lab (GBL) where he oversees field-based and data-based research projects. He holds an M.Phil. in economics from the University of Oxford with a focus on applied econometrics and development economics.

Moderator: 

Satyavrat KK, Communications Manager, Good Business Lab

Satyavrat currently serves as a Communications Manager at GBL. He has a rich background in journalism and technology policy writing for renowned platforms like The Hindu, Scroll, Himal Southasian, Bot Populi, and Elle Magazine.

Listen to their full conversation below:

If questions still linger, drop us an email at info@goodbusinesslab.org.

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