Keeping score of women’s financial inclusion in Ethiopia

“It does not come as a surprise to me,” said Tigist Abate, Vice President of Operations at Enat Bank, as the results of Ethiopia’s first Women’s Financial Inclusion Scorecard were unveiled. Enat Bank had just been recognized as the only financial institution in the country to receive a “transformational” rating — the highest possible — across all dimensions of the Scorecard. “As you know, women’s financial inclusion and empowerment have been part of Enat Bank’s DNA from the outset. Enat Bank was founded by women, and for the past 12 years we have been working to bring this vision to life.”

Enat’s achievement stands out — but it also comes at a time of remarkable change across Ethiopia’s financial sector. The rise of digital services, new market entrants, and regulatory reforms are creating more opportunities than ever to expand access to finance. Yet for many women, these opportunities remain out of reach.

Women continue to be significantly underrepresented as account holders, borrowers, users of digital services, and decision makers within financial institutions. In 2021, the gap in account ownership between men and women in Ethiopia stood at 19 percentage points — one of the largest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women hold just 14% of mobile money accounts, are 1.5 times less likely to receive loans, and when they do, the amounts are often far smaller than those offered to men.

These gaps are more than statistics — they are barriers to economic growth. According to World Bank estimates, closing key gaps in economic participation, including access to finance, could increase Ethiopia’s GDP by up to US$3.7 billion annually.
 

A New Tool to Drive Change: The Women’s Financial Inclusion Scorecard

In response, in March 2025, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), in partnership with the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, launched Ethiopia’s first Women’s Financial Inclusion Scorecard — a pioneering tool to help financial institutions assess how well they serve women as clients, employees, and leaders. This effort supports the implementation of Ethiopia’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy II (2021–2025) and underscores the country’s broader commitment to narrowing disparities in women’s access to financial services and leadership within the sector.

Ethiopia is now the second country globally — after Pakistan — to implement such a tool.

The Scorecard was co-developed through a consultative process involving NBE, commercial banks, and experts from academia and the financial industry. The development process included joint design sessions grounded in both global best practices and the Ethiopian context; stakeholder consultations and feedback sessions with banks, regulators, and technical experts; as well as pilot testing and validation with participating financial institutions.

This collaborative approach ensured that the Scorecard is not merely a compliance checklist, but a dynamic tool that supports internal reflection, institutional learning, and sectorwide accountability. It responds to a simple but powerful premise: you cannot improve what you do not measure.

The Scorecard evaluates financial institutions across three core areas (refer to figure 1):

• Workforce Inclusion — Representation of women across staff levels, with emphasis on senior and middle management roles.
• Access to Financial Products — Reach and usage of products by women, including credit, savings, payments, and insurance.
• Tailored Innovation — Availability of financial products, services, or delivery models designed to meet the specific needs of women.

Institutions are scored on a 1 to 5 scale — from foundational to transformational — enabling benchmarking across the sector and encouraging continuous progress.
 

Figure 1: Women’s Financial Inclusion Scorecard 

What the Data Reveal

The Scorecard’s initial implementation with 30 financial institutions revealed promising developments alongside critical areas for growth. The results from this first cycle were officially launched at the Ethiopia Finance Forum on May 16, 2025, marking a key milestone in the country’s efforts to advance women’s financial inclusion through evidence-based tools and sectorwide dialogue. Key insights include the following:

• Workforce inclusion is improving, largely due to regulatory mandates on diversity and leadership targets. However, institutions still lack support systems like childcare, mentorship, and parental leave beyond mandatory maternity provisions.
• Access to financial products shows moderate progress. While more women are being reached with credit, most financial products are not yet tailored to their specific needs or constraints.
• Innovation remains limited. A few institutions are testing new digital channels, but sectorwide efforts to design financial tools with women in mind are still in early stages.
• Sex-disaggregated data collection is happening, but it is not consistently analyzed or used to drive decision making or product development.

Four Priorities for Accelerating Progress

One clear takeaway from the initial implementation is that policy leadership drives results. The strongest performance emerged in areas where regulatory guidance was clear – underscoring the role of mandates in driving institutional action. To build on this momentum, the Scorecard points to four key areas where institutions, regulators, and development partners can act:

1. Develop financial products that respond to women’s needs and preferences.
2. Promote inclusive digital innovation that expands women’s access to services.
3. Strengthen disaggregated data systems for better monitoring and learning.
4. Integrate women-focused metrics into broader Environmental, Social and Governance and compliance frameworks.

The NBE is now exploring how best to integrate the Scorecard into its supervisory frameworks to reinforce accountability and track sector progress. The tool will also inform future policy development under Ethiopia’s next National Financial Inclusion Strategy.

The World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab will continue to support this agenda by generating research and evidence to expand access to finance for women entrepreneurs — and by sharing Ethiopia’s experience with peers across the region and beyond.

The complete Scorecard report can be accessed here.