By Oyinlola Awonuga
Lack of education, income and trust are major causes of women’s financial exclusion in Nigeria.
Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA) an organisation committed to promoting financial inclusion in Nigeria stated this at a press conference in Lagos last Friday.
The Head Research of the organisation, Ashley Immanuel who disclosed the outcome at the conference said Nigeria faces a particularly significant and growing gender gap in financial inclusion.
“ Our analysis found that the most important drivers of financial exclusion for both genders are lack of income, lack of education, and low trust in Financial Service Providers (FSPs) and that these factors also drive the gender gap.”
According to Immanuel, there is “ 60percent of lack of access for both genders because women have a lower income, education, and trust levels than men, these factors also, to a large extent, explain the gender gap in overall exclusion.”
She noted that women and men with similar levels of income, education, and trust in FSPs are approximately equally likely to be financially excluded, yet women typically have much lower levels of income and education than men do.
“ Income, education, and trust in FSPs are so important that the effects of other factors on exclusion—that are commonly believed to be strong and that are often the focus of interventions—are dwarfed by comparison.
“Approximately half of the population of Nigerian population earns less than seven hundred naira per-day, 61percent of boys net enrolment at the primary school level which girls are 56percent. Girls are also more burdened with household chores,” she reiterated.
Based on the analysis of the findings of the group, Immanuel highlighted three key areas to achieve sustainable change and may be complemented by subsidy efforts to provide services in the meantime.
“The first thing to do is to focus on efforts to boost women’s financial inclusion which should shift beyond product innovation to address the underlying drivers of gender gaps, through more systematic efforts to address women’s incomes and economic empowerment, education and boosting trust in FSPs
“Second, ideally in parallel with the first point noted above, targeted collaboration across stakeholders is needed to understand and identify options for improving the commercial viability of serving financially excluded women, even in the absence of improved income, education, and trust in FSPs. Such an effort would need to outline the degree to which commercial viability is actually lacking and then determine interventions that could ‘tip the balance’.
“ Lastly, stakeholders who choose to provide financial products and services to excluded women who, despite efforts in the first two categories, do not present commercial viability (yet), must recognise that, until viability is reached, such services will require subsidies,” Immanuel explained.
In any case, she said product offerings must be relevant, not just ‘aspirational’, and must meet women ‘where they are’.
“They must be suited to women’s low current levels of income, education and trust in FSPs. Ideally, to achieve lasting impact, they should be designed to increase women’s low current levels of income, education, and trust in FSPs.”
She said EFINA will build demand by prioritising activities and interventions that will increase women’s levels of income, education and trust in FSPs”
