Third annual international fintech competitors celebrates trail-blazing options for girls’s monetary inclusion

NEW YORK, NY, October 12, 2021 — Girls’s World Banking introduced at this time Enhance Capital and Folks’s Pension Belief because the winners of its Third Annual Fintech Innovation Problem, a part of the group’s Making Finance Work for Girls Thought Management Collection. Every year, the Problem gives a world stage for fintechs to current revolutionary options and enterprise fashions that assist construct financial safety and prosperity for unbanked, underserved girls. This yr’s competitors culminated in a stay digital occasion to honor each recipients and get a deeper look into their fintech options, in addition to hear from visitor audio system to debate the position of monetary know-how in the way forward for girls’s financial empowerment.

“We’re thrilled to acknowledge Enhance Capital and Folks’s Pension Belief and their contribution in the direction of girls’s monetary inclusion. Each firms clearly exhibit the game-changing potential of fintechs to advance girls’s financial empowerment on a broader scale,” stated Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Girls’s World Banking. “Practically two years into the pandemic, the compounding financial results of COVID-19 proceed to take a disproportionate toll on girls. Now greater than ever, it’s essential to make sure equal entry for 1 billion girls worldwide who’re nonetheless excluded from formal monetary providers. Fintechs equivalent to Enhance Capital and Folks’s Pension Belief create worth in areas the place conventional monetary service suppliers haven’t entered, significantly on the native market degree. We belief that this competitors’s platform will exhibit to different fintechs, buyers and the broader monetary sector that serving low-income girls is a singular and worthwhile alternative.”

Enhance Capital and Folks’s Pension Belief had been chosen from a bunch of 4 finalists, chosen from a pool of candidates representing 34 international locations. They offered their profitable options to a various panel of judges and a digital viewers alongside fellow finalists hiveonline and Mosabi. Enhance Capital and Folks’s Pension Belief have got down to allow better financial safety and prosperity for low-income girls in rising markets, every addressing a particular subject:

Enhance Capital permits end-to-end digital microlending know-how based mostly on revolutionary chat-style functions, permitting MSMEs in Cambodia to obtain each secured and unsecured loans extra conveniently and cheaply utilizing smartphones.

Folks’s Pension Belief affords voluntary, versatile and digitally pushed retirement merchandise, significantly for casual staff in Ghana, to advertise monetary inclusion by guaranteeing they’ve a greater tomorrow.

“The Fintech Innovation Problem has established itself globally as a key platform for attracting equity-minded innovators and inspiring daring options to monetary exclusion for ladies. This yr’s extremely proficient pool of candidates as soon as once more exceeded expectations, they usually all deserve recognition for his or her imaginative and prescient and entrepreneurial efforts,” stated Sara Elinson, EY Americas Technique and Transactions FinTech Chief and one of many competitors’s professional judges. “We particularly stay up for seeing how our finalists proceed to evolve their distinctive fintech options for social fairness and encourage future entrepreneurs to comply with this path in the direction of monetary inclusion.”

The entire panel of professional judges, representing the worldwide improvement, enterprise, and know-how sectors, additionally included Katharine Budd, Co-Founder and CEO of NOW Cash; Dave Kim, Program Officer of Monetary Companies for the Poor on the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis; Pat Patel, Precept Government Officer of the Financial Authority of Singapore; Otto Williams, Senior Vice President, Head of Partnerships, Innovation and Digital Options at Visa CEMEA; and Mary Ellen Iskenderian, CEO and President of Girls’s World Banking.

Earlier, Alexa Varsavsky, CEO and Isabel Oriol, COO of ADA Impacto, had been named the recipients of Girls’s World Banking’s Feminine Founder Award, launched this yr as a part of the worldwide competitors to honor a feminine founder(s) who has proven exemplary management in constructing an inclusive office whereas working in the direction of girls’s monetary inclusion. Provided that solely 7% of worldwide fintech founders are girls, this is a crucial recognition. The 2 winners had been featured in a fireplace chat with Angélica Fuentes, Founding father of Muvop, to share their experiences and insights as feminine entrepreneurs in a male-dominated trade.

The digital occasion additionally featured a panel dialogue entitled “Two Sides of a Coin: How Fintech Innovation and Regulation Impression Monetary Inclusion,” moderated by Spiros Margaris, Founding father of Margaris Ventures, and with audio system Andi Taufan Garuda Putra, CEO and Founding father of Amartha; Telmen Gerelt, CEO of Ard Credit score JSC; Karen Miller, International Head, Management & Range Applications at Girls’s World Banking; Pratin Vallabhaneni, DC Monetary Companies Regulatory Accomplice at White and Case; and Jo Ann Barefoot, CEO and Co-Founding father of the Alliance for Progressive Regulation. Dr. Martin Ihrig, Affiliate Dean & Medical Professor at New York College was the Grasp of Ceremonies.

Because the winners of the Fintech Innovation Problem, Enhance Capital and Folks’s Pension Belief every obtain a custom-made UX design steering session furnished by Visa Inc., an unique pitch assembly and suggestions session with the Girls’s World Banking Asset Administration staff, 4 1:1 management teaching and suggestions classes with certainly one of Girls’s World Banking’s govt coaches, and as much as $4,000 to be utilized in the direction of the price of any NYU Faculty of Skilled Research persevering with training programs or certificates. All 4 finalists additionally obtain membership within the Girls’s World Banking’s International Member Community, a collaborative alternative to attach with different monetary service suppliers and share finest practices in selling girls’s monetary inclusion. The winners of the Feminine Founder Award will obtain a 1:1 advertising and marketing and PR technique seek the advice of with Anthemis, a number one fintech funding platform.

The Making Finance Work for Girls Fintech Innovation Problem is sponsored by the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis (Main Sponsor), Ernst & Younger LLP (EY US and Advancing Sponsor), and Novi (Supporting Sponsor). Girls’s World Banking’s core funders are Australia’s Division of International Affairs and Commerce (DFAT), the Swedish Worldwide Growth Cooperation Company (SIDA), and the Visa Basis.

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About Girls’s World Banking

Girls’s World Banking designs and invests in monetary options, establishments, and coverage environments in rising markets to create better financial stability and prosperity for ladies, their households, and their communities. With a world attain of 57 companions in 32 international locations serving greater than 69 million girls purchasers, Girls’s World Banking drives affect via its scalable, market-driven options; gender lens non-public fairness fund; and management and variety packages. To be taught extra about Girls’s World Banking, go to womensworldbanking.org.

Contact:
Conrad Jarzebowski
Director of Communications & Advertising
cpj@womensworldbanking.org

Chelsea Bennington
Digital Advertising & Engagement Specialist
cb@womensworldbanking.org