Empowering Women and Farmers: Consumer-Centric Financial Innovations

Fiw Topics

Digital Financial Services
Women's Financial Inclusion

Fiw Year

2024

Transcripts:

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Summary + Key Insights

A panel discussion on empowering women and farmers through consumer-centric financial innovations highlights the importance of inclusive financial services.

📊 Data Accessibility: Unlocking data about underserved populations, such as farmers and women, is crucial for financial institutions to provide appropriate services. Without this data, lenders struggle to assess risk and potential.

💬 Consumer-Centric Design: Financial products must be designed with the consumer’s daily realities in mind to be effective. Understanding the behaviors and needs of women and farmers can drive better product development.

🚀 Technology Adoption: The increasing penetration of smartphones opens new avenues for digital financial solutions, enabling underserved communities to manage their finances more effectively.

🛠️ Financial Education: Training programs that enhance financial literacy and digital skills are vital for empowering domestic workers and farmers to use financial tools confidently.

💡 Collaboration for Impact: Partnerships between financial institutions and advocacy groups can enhance access to financial services for women, promoting both economic growth and social change.

🌱 Long-Term Benefits: Financial inclusion initiatives should aim for sustainable outcomes, ensuring that both economic viability and social impact are prioritized.

🔄 Dynamic Ecosystems: Ecosystems that integrate various stakeholders—governments, private sectors, and communities—are essential for creating lasting financial innovations that serve everyone.

This session summary was AI-generated using NoteGPT.

How do we ensure financial solutions meet the needs of underserved communities, particularly women and smallholder farmers? This session will spotlight targeted strategies for driving financial inclusion by designing for the end-user, with the end-user in mind.

Drawing from Amarante Consulting’s experience delivering digital agri-wallets and blockchain-enabled finance solutions for smallholder farmers in Benin, as well as partnerships addressing gender-specific financial barriers from our work in various other countries, this panel will showcase the power of user-focused financial innovations. The Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) will share insights on their Digital Kisan Credit Card, which simplifies credit access for farmers, and Frictionless Savings, designed to expand financial inclusion for women in India. Women’s World Banking will discuss impactful case studies from their work in Southeast Asia.

Join our panel to learn how these projects have driven meaningful change—and how you can apply these approaches for initiatives in your region.

Session Speakers

Sahana Arun Kumar

Partner and Managing Director, Amarante Consulting

Sahana Arun Kumar is Partner and Managing Director at Amarante Consulting, specializing in digital, finance, and inclusion projects since 2008. With over 16 years of experience across public and private sectors, she leads digital transformation initiatives for sustainable growth. Sahana focuses on strategy building, partnership modeling, and implementation of both large-scale and micro digital transformation projects. Her current work emphasizes “phygital” programs that promote public-private partnerships and drive national strategies for inclusive services. Sahana also invests her time to support start ups for their growth and impact trajectories. A speaker and trainer, Sahana is also an ardent promotor of women in business. She has led work across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America and holds an MBA from HEC Paris.

Antonia Bassene

Regional Manager for Francophone Africa, Amarante Consulting

• Formée en audit et contrôle de gestion • 10 années d’expérience en multinationale • un porte-monnaie électronique conçu et lancé, un réseau d’agents constitué • De multiples projets et études de faisabilité pilotés et mis en œuvre dans les domaines du crowdgunding, du e-commerce, de la transformation et digitalisation des chaînes de valeur, de la transformation numérique des organisations publiques ou privées, de la réglementation des DFS, agency banking dans la zone UEMOA

Agnes Salyanty

Senior Research Lead for Southeast Asia, Women’s World Banking

A financial inclusion enthusiast, Agnes has almost two decades of experience researching and advocating policy through evidence-based research in diverse areas, including fintech and the banking industry, MSMEs, digital payments and transactions, Government-to-Person transactions, and Women’s Empowerment. She now spearheads research initiatives that address critical issues in financial inclusion, in markets such as Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. She holds a list of academic paper and research publications, blogs,and articles in media outlets such as Kompas and Katadata. Agnes holds an MSC in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the Manchester Business School-University of Manchester and has further enhanced her expertise through several.

Shilpa Rao

Head – Partnerships and the Gender and Finance, The Swanari Program, Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH)

Shilpa Rao is a financial inclusion expert with over 17 years of experience across multilateral agencies, social enterprises, and the public sector. She currently heads Partnerships and the Gender and Finance Program (Swanari) at the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India, where she spearheads initiatives focused on women’s financial inclusion and access to sustainable financial products. Shilpa has led diverse projects across India and Southeast Asia, specializing in financial inclusion, microfinance, affordable housing, policy and government program reform and market and impact assessments. At RBIH, she drives innovative digital solutioning projects focussed on women, including the Digital Self Help Group Program and the Digital solutions to enable Frictionless Savings for Women. Shilpa’s interdisciplinary approach to leadership and problem-solving has earned her recognition for successfully bringing together stakeholders to address complex financial inclusion challenges.

Leilah Elmokadem

Project Manager, Amarante Consulting

FIW Resources

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