SBP’s Banking on Equality Policy launched

Scheme will help reduce gender gap in financial inclusion, improve women’s access to financial services

ISLAMABAD:

The government aims to promote financial inclusion of women by providing equitable opportunities for access to financial services to all segments of the population and the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) Banking on Equality Policy will be instrumental in achieving this goal, said President Arif Alvi.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative on Friday, he lauded the SBP’s efforts and voiced hope that the scheme would help streamline the process of financial inclusion of women.

The initiative is aimed at reducing the gender gap in financial inclusion and improving women’s access to financial services.

“The Ehsaas programme incorporates Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vision of One Woman, One Bank Account to steer financial inclusion among women,” he said.

Speaking on the occasion, SBP Governor Reza Baqir talked about the background of the policy and said that reducing the gender gap in financial inclusion was a priority of the central bank.

He stressed that mainstreaming the role of women would benefit Pakistan at social, economic and financial levels.

On this end, the first step is to ensure women empowerment by enhancing access to formal bank accounts in a bid to open doors to entrepreneurial opportunities.

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“Advancements in branchless banking played a significant role in improving access to finance for people from various socio-economic backgrounds without the added cost of setting up brick and mortar structures,” he said.

“As a result, 62% of adults in Pakistan had bank accounts by the end of December 2020, showing a significant growth compared to 45% in 2017.”

He pointed out that the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) fixed a target to ensure that at least 20 million women owned active bank accounts by 2023.

Despite the overall growth in financial inclusion, the gender gap has continued to persist, he lamented.

Citing figures, the governor said that only 14.5 million women-owned accounts were active by the end of December 2020. At the same time, 38.7 million active bank accounts belonged to men.

Baqir shared that the SBP recently introduced a digital customer onboarding framework for banks, which allowed the opening of bank account through digital means and eliminated the need to visit a bank branch.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th, 2021.

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