Municipal Savings and Loans Banks to Offer Financial Services for Women

As part of the FEPCMAC Corporate Project: “Challenges & Opportunities for Women under a Financial Inclusion Approach,” which is implemented with the support of CAF—development bank of Latin America—we have considered working internally with collaborators following a gender equality corporate policy for the Municipal Savings and Loans Associations (CMAC) System. Noteworthy is that the System employs almost 10,000 women, 87% of them in living provinces and 54% of them in the 30–45 age group.

On the external customer side, work will be developed directly on the design of specialized financial services for women, and thus, the following aspects will be part of the strategy:

• International Financial Product Benchmarking for the women segment in microfinance institutions in the region in savings, loans and micro-insurance.
• Definition of features of the ideal products and services for women, after conducting customer journey studies on profiles of the existing customer base.
• Identification of marketing and financial services channels.

Thus, CMACs continue to jointly adopt international standards and reaffirm their commitment to reinforce the application of the user approach in the design of specialized financial services with the main objective of providing innovative solutions for a segment that accounts for 50% of their customer base.

Financial inclusion is an important factor for empowerment and economic autonomy of women, insofar as it allows them to expand their possibilities for productive, personal and family development. Through technical assistance, knowledge generation and funding, CAF advances comprehensive actions to promote the well-being of all Latin Americans.