Financial Inclusion

Gender equality is a central component of socio-economic development of any country and women’s financial inclusion is a priority area for the SBP. Recently, SBP has taken ambitious steps to advance women’s access to financial services. SBP’s journey began with the launch of the first gender mainstreaming policy titled “Banking on Equality” which laid the foundation for embedding a gender lens in the policies and practices of financial institution. Under the policy, women’s specific bottlenecks are acknowledged and addressed to remove barriers in the path of women’s financial inclusion journey. Through its launch and implementation, SBP has been able to move the needle on women’s financial inclusion and gender diversity as banks come up with more initiatives to improve women’s financial inclusion.

The SBP has recently signed the WE-Finance Code, an international collaborative initiative led by the World Bank, to advance women entrepreneurs’ access to finance. Through this commitment, SBP and partner banks aim to strengthen gender-disaggregated data, appoint institutional gender focal points, and co-create solutions that reduce financing gaps and build a more inclusive financial ecosystem for women.