As part of the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) commitment to increasing women’s financial inclusion rates and encouraging their use of formal financial services, the CBE launched the “Women Financial Inclusion Event”, which annually kicks off on the 8th of March, coinciding with International Women’s Day and continues till the end of the month.
The CBE revealed that the “Women Financial Inclusion Event”, launched in 2019, has contributed to availing nearly 1.4 million financial products to women by March 2024. This includes the opening of 664,000 bank accounts and 196,000 e-wallets, as well as issuing 530,000 prepaid cards.
The event comes in line with the CBE’s efforts to promote women’s financial inclusion, yielding tangible progress in the financial inclusion rate of women, which reached 68.8% by the end of December 2024, reflecting a 295% growth rate compared to 2016. As a result, around 23.3 million women, out of a total of 33.9 million women aged 15 and above, currently have access to financial services and own transaction accounts.
This progress was driven by the CBE’s Financial Inclusion Strategy 2022-2025, aimed at promoting financial inclusion across all segments of society, with women at the forefront. The Strategy is founded on several pillars, including the development of women-supportive legal and regulatory environment, the launch of stimulating initiatives and projects in collaboration with ministries, relevant authorities, and international institutions, as well as guiding banks to offer financial products that meet women’s needs. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of spreading financial literacy – a key pillar of the Financial Inclusion Strategy -, as it plays a critical role in raising financial awareness and enabling women to make sound financial decisions.
Several regulations have been issued to foster supportive legislative and regulatory environment to facilitate women’s access to banking services and products. Notably, these regulations include guidelines for financial inclusion products and services that simplify due diligence procedures for individuals and economic activities. This allows customers, particularly women, to open accounts using only their National IDs for personal or business purposes, without requiring any additional documents. This initiative aims to assist housewives, micro-entrepreneurs, and craftspeople, while also enabling women to open accounts for their minor children, addressing barriers that women encounter when engaging with the banking sector, especially divorced or widowed mothers.
Within its ongoing efforts to promote women’s economic empowerment and provide suitable financial services and products, the CBE has trained bank employees in customer segmentation and retail products departments, in collaboration with international organizations (such as the OECD and Women’s World Banking), as this training aimed to encourage them to thoroughly assess women’s financial needs. As a result, banks are already issuing and developing tailored financial packages for women within the banking sector that cater to their specific requirements.
In light of Fintech’s role in boosting women’s financial inclusion and facilitating their access to financial services, especially in remote areas, the CBE has sponsored the Digital Saving and Lending Groups Project “Tahwisha.” This project aims to incentivize women in Egypt’s rural areas and countryside to motivate them to save, and apply for loans to open small and micro-enterprises. As of December 2024, the number of women participating in Tahwisha’s electronic application reached approximately 246,400. Furthermore, around 209,000 women within savings groups and 102,500 women outside these groups have benefited from financial literacy and awareness campaigns.
As part of promoting digital transformation and integrating women into the formal financial sector, the CBE launched the “Digitization of International Remittances Project” for Egyptians working abroad. The project aims to provide banking products to remittance recipients, around 1.5 million of whom are women, representing about 85% of total beneficiaries. The CBE also participates in the Women’s Economic and Social Empowerment Program (WESEP), which is implemented in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and executed by “Pathfinder”.
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