By Alvaro Torres
Breaking Barriers: How Latin America’s Financial Sector Is Contributing to Closing the Gender Gap
The Promise and Challenge of Gender-Inclusive Finance
Across Latin America, women entrepreneurs are rewriting entrenched gender norms when it comes to entrepreneurship. Nearly 49% of women in the region have started their own business, based on 2025 data1, making Latin America and the Caribbean the most entrepreneurial region in the world for women. Yet, despite this dynamism, 73% of women-led businesses are unable to access the financial resources they need to grow. The gender gap in financial inclusion remains stubborn:
70% of women owned a bank account compared to 77% of men2
22.4% of men reported having formal credit vs 17.2% of women3
The region shows one of the largest financial “resilience” gender gaps: 56% of men versus 39% of women reported being able to come up with emergency money within 30 days4
The financing gap is massive: women-led SMEs in the region face a USD 93 billion shortfall in needed credit, representing 8% of the global financing gap for women entrepreneurs5. These statistics highlight both the urgency and the opportunity to design financial solutions that help close these gender gaps. This is precisely the focus of a gender-lens impact investment strategy co-managed by responsAbility that combines financing with targeted technical assistance (TA). Through this strategy, responsAbility works with financial institutions to integrate gender considerations into product design, data systems, and client engagement. In doing so, responsAbility and its partner institutions helps close persistent gender gaps in financial inclusion and advance inclusive economic growth across Latin America and other emerging markets.
Financial institutions in Latin America are waking up to the massive untapped opportunity and responsibility. But what does it take to move from good intentions to real impact? We highlight three case studies of leading microfinance institutions and banks from across the region.
Ears on the Ground: When in doubt, always ask the Customer
FAMA is one of the largest microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Nicaragua, with over 34 years of experience serving micro and small enterprises, particularly in peri-urban areas. Originally founded with support from ACCION, FAMA has built a reputation for resilience, navigating both political and economic crises while maintaining strong financial performance. It was the top-ranked MFI in Latin America among participating FIs in the 2025 MFI Index, with standout scores in client resilience and gender impact6.
When FAMA decided to develop its “Crece Mujer” loan product for women micro-entrepreneurs, it started with a simple question: what do women actually want from their financial provider? FAMA wanted to design the product with its women customers, not just for them. A customer survey revealed three key takeaways:
Flexibility is key: 78% of women surveyed wanted loans with flexible payment options, tailored to their cash flows and the realities of their businesses.
Support matters, but might not be the primary driver of selecting a partner: Over 70% of women ran their businesses independently. While 35% appreciate business support, fewer than 10% seek out mentorship or education as a primary reason to choose a lender.
Personal touch wins trust: 42% prefer in-person engagement when learning about financial products, highlighting the importance of relationships in building loyalty.
These insights laid the foundation for the “Crece Mujer” product pilot, which includes flexible loan terms, maternity benefits, financial inclusion trainings, etc. The outreach strategy includes digital marketing, community workshops, and referral campaigns.
From Insights to Action: Bridging the Gaps Women Face
The feedback from FAMA’s customers reflects broader, systemic challenges faced by women entrepreneurs across Latin America. These gaps are opportunities for institutions like FAMA to refine their offerings and deepen their impact. Through the TA facility of the gender-lens investment strategy, the technical assistance provider (a consortium of Niras and Women’s World Banking) engaged with FAMA’s product team to provide suggestions for testing during the pilot phase:
Awareness and communication: Even when flexible loans or working capital lines exist, women are often unaware of these options. Marketing and communication strategies rarely highlight features that matter most to women, such as no-collateral loans, maternity benefits (a one-month EMI subsidy for pregnant women) or annual health check-ups.
Non-financial barriers: Many women entrepreneurs lack access to practical business skills, such as registering a business, paying taxes, or using digital payments. Financial institutions tend to offer generic mentorship, missing the mark on actionable, skills-based support .
Bias in lending: Unconscious bias, both human and algorithmic, continues to shape lending decisions. Women face hurdles in applying for loans, negotiating terms, and interacting with staff. Training for frontline staff on gender sensitivity is often missing, and digital channels can unintentionally reinforce these biases.
Data blind spots: Few institutions track gender-disaggregated data on satisfaction, retention, and product usage. Without this, it’s impossible to assess effectiveness or identify where to focus next.
Targeted Retention and Gender Inclusion: Solidario’s Approach
Banco Solidario is one of Ecuador’s leading inclusive finance institutions, known for its strong outreach to microentrepreneurs and low-income families.
Solidario has a clear gender-smart focus which is measured in different metrics continuously monitored by the bank. For instance, 59% of total borrowers catered to by its microcredit product are women. Most new-to-credit microcredit clients are also women (62% as of 2024), who also represent 62% of participants in financial education programs that the bank periodically conducts. Thus, as part of their efforts to continue improving their gender strategy, Solidario worked with responsAbility’s partner, Sagana, an impact investment advisory firm specializing in gender mainstreaming and technical assistance, to identify opportunities for improving customer retention by gathering insights through its exit survey. This tool is relevant to identify the main drivers of client turnover and to address them.
Sagana proposed a strategic shift in the project objectives: instead of trying to retain every client, focus on retaining the most profitable. This involves segmenting clients by profitability, risk, and loyalty, and tailoring retention efforts accordingly. For example, Sagana recommended Solidario to conduct personalized outreach to high-value clients before their contracts end, offer incentives to complete feedback calls, conduct tailored learning sessions to front-line employees using examples from those customer representatives who are especially good at customer retention, and bundle loans with other services to enhance value per client. In parallel, Sagana suggested refining the exit survey to include questions to gauge the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and competitor benchmarking and using the survey as a tool to identify interest in other products, turning a departure into a potential re-engagement opportunity. The goal hence should not just be to reduce desertion, but to build a healthier, more resilient portfolio by focusing on the clients who matter most.
In line with Sagana’s recommendations, Solidario carried out gender-smart commercial training and mapped out best retention practices across its branches. This led to the development of a dedicated workshop, which has been delivered to the entire sales force and is now a core part of the bank’s entry-level training courses, ensuring that staff are well-equipped to implement targeted retention strategies effectively.
Designing for Inclusion: Cathay’s Gender-Sensitive Survey Strategy
Banco Cathay is a niche SME bank with more than 25 years of operations. It is uniquely positioned as the only bank in the country with a dedicated business unit for the Asian community, offering services in Chinese and maintaining deep cultural ties.
To better understand the experiences of its diverse MSME clients, especially women-led businesses, Sagana supported Cathay in designing a gender-disaggregated customer satisfaction survey. The survey captures four key indicators: overall satisfaction (CSAT), customer effort (CES), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and renewal intention. It also includes questions on women’s ownership and leadership, enabling deeper segmentation. Given the linguistic diversity of its client base, Cathay opted for phone and in-branch administration over digital channels to ensure accessibility. Next steps include support from the technical assistance provider to strengthen the institution’s ability to capture and report gender-disaggregated MSME data, refining products and engagement strategies to better serve women-owned businesses, and building internal capacity through targeted staff training on gender sensitivity.
The Road Ahead: From Pilots to Systemic Change
A few lessons emerge clearly from these three case studies, which can be applied by financial institutions around the world that seek to develop gender-inclusive products and services:
Design with women, not just for them: Involve women in product design, gather feedback, and iterate.
Leverage community and digital channels: Meet women where they are, whether in person, online, or through trusted community networks.
Integrate non-financial services: Offer practical, skills-based workshops and digital tools that address real business needs.
Train staff and track progress: Gender-sensitivity training and robust, gender-disaggregated data are essential.
Segment and target: Use data to identify and retain profitable female clients, and tailor products and services to their needs.
Taken together, these initiatives indicate how gender-smart finance can move beyond pilot projects toward more systemic practices that aim to support women entrepreneurs across Latin America.
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1 The Power of Entrepreneurship: Women Transforming the Region with Courage and Vision | United Nations Development Programme 2 The Power of Entrepreneurship: Women Transforming the Region with Courage and Vision | United Nations Development Programme 3 The Gig Economy and Financial Inclusion of Women in Latin America | IDB 4 Women and Financial Inclusion | World Bank Group 5 Access to Finance for Women-Led SMEs in Latin America and the Caribbean: Challenges and Opportunities | ConnectAmericas 6 Impact data spotlight: FAMA helps small businesses grow in Nicaragua - Accion