Understanding Why Women Don’t Save at the Bank and How to Solve It
Understanding Why Women Don’t Save at the Bank and How to Solve It
Women save but not at the bank. Why? To answer this question let’s consider a few factors.
Few financial products and services are developed with the needs of the low-income woman customer in mind or account for the challenges that a low-income woman might face.
Many financial products are not set up to sustain the continued interaction required to create the trust that the low-income woman needs to fully embrace formal financial services, while others even create impediments for women to access them.
The key, as is often the case, understanding how women are currently saving, what they want from a savings account, and offering a service that improves on their existing options while ensuring that the solution is financially viable for the institution.
According to research findings, here are the top 5 reasons why women don’t save with financial institutions.
- Preference for informal savings: Women often rely on informal savings methods due to familiarity or cultural norms, which can limit their access to formal financial services.
- Limited access to formal financial services: Many women, especially those in rural areas, face difficulties in accessing formal financial institutions due to a lack of nearby branches or outreach programs.
- Lack of proper identification or mobile phones: Without proper identification documents or access to mobile phones, women may struggle to open accounts or use digital financial services.
- Distance from bank branches: Physical distance from bank branches can be a significant barrier, particularly for women who have limited mobility or face transportation challenges.
- Unsuitability of formal savings accounts for small savings amounts: Traditional savings accounts may not accommodate small, irregular savings, which are common among women with lower incomes.
How then can financial institutions, develop products that are suitable for low-income women? Introducing the Savings Mobilization approach.
The Savings Mobilization approach developed, tried, and tested by Women’s World Banking helps banks drive savings deposits by tackling the key barriers that prevent low-income women from saving at the bank. The Savings Mobilization Solution, an integrated behavioral design solution that addresses the deeper behavioral barriers that women face, is geared towards addressing barriers at various touchpoints in women customers’ complete savings journey; and addresses their stated needs as well as latent needs.
The toolkit follows Women’s World Banking’s women-centered design methodology and provides end-to-end support for the project team, from assessing your organization’s suitability for the solution, securing necessary internal approval and alignment, through to implementation of the Savings Mobilization solution in the field and monitoring performance.
It is a holistic, self-guided blueprint with the means to help a financial institution capture the huge market opportunity that is capturing the low-income women segment through a fitting and relevant savings solution. The toolkit contains sequential sections following a replication methodology, along with practical worksheets and frameworks to first plan for the project and subsequently closely steer the process. It also provides tools to support implementation and eventual monitoring.
The toolkit can be used by deposit-taking institutions, product designers, financial inclusion advocates, and other stakeholders.
To access the Savings Mobilization Replication toolkit, visit here.
