GBA Helps Inform G20 Financial Inclusion Strategy

Monday 30th January 2017

The Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), a body set up to support the G20’s strategy for financial inclusion, met in Wiesbaden, Germany, January 23-24 to develop their action plan for the German Presidency in 2017. Inez Murray participated in the SME Finance sub-group as part of GBA’s strategic partnership with the SME Finance Forum, an implementing partner for GPFI.

GBA was asked for input on the cross-cutting theme of Women’s Economic Empowerment and recommended several courses of action, including that GPFI consider integration of the 10-point plan developed by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) in their 2016 Denaru Action Plan, which identifies measures countries can take to increase the number of women with access to quality and affordable financial services globally and close the financial inclusion gender gap. Action No. 6 in this plan refers to the need to develop and promote best practices in the collecting, analyzing and use of sex-disaggregated data to advance financial inclusion.

It is notable that sex-disaggregated data is not included in 2016’s G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators document. The SME Finance Forum is suggesting that the GPFI consider recommending that G20 governments integrate sex-disaggregated data into their financial inclusion scorecards. During the meeting, the SME Finance Forum reported that its first step in this regard is to take stock of efforts being made to harmonize definitions, such as those of “woman-owned business.”

Data harmonization is widely agreed to be foundational to establishing data that are comparable across countries. However, given that there is no common agreement on even what an SME is across countries, establishing harmonization on the critical path to sex-disaggregated data may be counterproductive. This and many other issues will be explored in the first half of 2017 as GBA leads the development of a Global Gender Data Strategy with our partners, including Data2X. More about that in next month’s newsletter.