EFInA: More women use informal financial services

By Collins Nweze

Joint reserach conducted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access (EFInA) has shown that women have greater access to informal financial services than men.

The Assessment of  Women’s Financial Inclusion in Nigeria report, launched yesterday in Lagos,  showed that women exhibit relatively high access and usage of informal-only financial services than men.

This report presents a clear call to achieve gender equity by helping women access and use financial services to create and sustain economic opportunities, reduce poverty, and build financial resilience.

“These services play an important role to manage liquidity, transact efficiently, build resilience from shocks, and create opportunities. However, they are often costly and can be high risk, particularly given the lower level of consumer protection they provide. By addressing these downsides, informal financial services could strengthen the customer experience and improve the quality of their product,” it said.

“This report presents a clear call to achieve gender equity by helping women access and use financial services to create and sustain economic opportunities, reduce poverty, and build financial resilience. In order to achieve these aims, stakeholders must tailor initiatives to increase,” it added.

nIt added that the causes and effects of low income, limited education, and lack of trust in FSPs are ‘macroeconomic’, gendered, and interlinked. “Therefore, as a first step, we recommend that stakeholders further discuss our findings to ensure alignment and collaboration. Following this, additional research to assess the drivers of these factors among women will deepen understanding and help actors to develop tailored solutions. Identifying appropriate pathways towards commercial viability, with or without improvements in income, education, and trust in FSPs, will also require an analysis of capacity building priorities and policy gaps”.

Speaking about the research, Ashley Immanuel, Head of Programmes at EFInA, said: “This research highlights the ways in which gender inequality in Nigeria contributes to differences in financial access for men and women. To address the financial inclusion gender gap, we need to work together to address this gender inequality, earn women’s trust in financial services, and explore ways to build a better business case for reaching excluded women.”

The EFInA Access to Financial Services in Nigeria surveys have found that, despite overall improvements in financial inclusion in Nigeria, we have not been able to close the gender gap in access to financial services. In fact, the gender gap – defined as the difference between the percentage of men that are financially included and the percentage of women that are financially included – grew slightly between 2008 and 2018. https://thenationonlineng.net/efina-more-women-use-informal-financial-services/