Banking on Equality Policy is a landmark policy by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion by bringing a shift towards women friendly business practices in the financial sector.
Women in Pakistan remain disproportionately under-served by the country’s financial system which is leading to a growing gender gap in financial inclusion. The growing gender gap has revealed that gender-neutral policies and practices of the financial sector, assumed to equally affect both genders, may not be effective against inherent gender inequalities, and will continue to create more obstacles in women’s financial inclusion. Cognizant of this, SBP has launched gender mainstreaming policy “Banking on Equality: Reducing the gender gap in financial inclusion” to enhance women’s financial inclusion.
Increase women’s ratio in financial sector to 20% .
Place Women Champions at 75% of all bank touch points.
Increase ratio of women branchless banking agents to 10%
Impart gender sensitivity training to all staff members to improve elimination of implicit gender biases.
Increase outreach of women centric products & services, access and usage of accounts, and financing to women entrepreneurs to reach 20 million unique active digital accounts for women by 2023.
Under the policy, instructions have been issued to financial institutions to achieve the following targets by 2024, to improve women’s financial inclusion, and economic participation in the workforce
