Fragmented market collaboration
A well-coordinated financial ecosystem - where regulators, providers, fintechs, and development partners work together towards common goals - is essential for reaching underserved women. When markets are fragmented, consumers must navigate contradictory and costly systems. For women, who often have less margin for error and fewer alternatives when pathways fail, this can be a dealbreaker. Pakistan's State Bank offers a strong example of how impactful coordination can be for women: since launching a gender mainstreaming framework in 2021, the gender gap in financial inclusion has narrowed from 39% to 30%.
11 Connected Barriers
Most Relevant Segments
- 01. Excluded, marginalized
- 02. Excluded, high potential
- 03. Included, underserved
- 04. Included, not underserved
Most Relevant Customer Journey Phases
- Phase 1: Account Ownership
- Phase 2: Basic Account Usage
- Phase 3: Active Account Usage
- Phase 4: Economic Empowerment
Key Evidence
Evidence on fragmented market collaboration points to two levers where coordinated action can meaningfully expand women's financial inclusion: an ecosystem-level coordinating body and shared data systems. Neither of these is sufficient alone - the evidence suggests it is their interaction that determines whether gender-intentional strategies move beyond pilots to system-wide change.
Where regulatory bodies work piecemeal - with conflicting mandates, overlapping jurisdictions, or no shared accountability - the costs are real: economic growth slows, productivity falls, and market actors bear the burden of navigating contradictory rules. In developing markets, fragmented regulation is particularly costly for smaller providers and fintechs, who lack the compliance infrastructure to absorb regulatory ambiguity. In contrast, a whole-of-market approach - where providers, regulators, and development actors share evidence, align incentives, and coordinate around gender-intentional goals - creates the conditions for solutions to move from isolated pilots to durable, system-wide inclusion.
Coordination without shared data is coordination in name only. Without shared data standards and interoperable reporting frameworks, institutions cannot build a system-level understanding of where women are being excluded, overcharged, or underserved — and cannot hold each other accountable for closing those gaps.
- Policymakers cannot identify where women are excluded or underserved because weak interoperability across data systems prevents linking datasets, even where sex-disaggregated data exists. Without integrated systems, institutions lack a full view of women’s financial journeys and cannot coordinate effectively. (World Bank 2026)
- Inconsistent reporting standards across institutions result in fragmented and non-comparable sex-disaggregated data, limiting the ability to aggregate and analyze trends at a system level. As a result, policymakers cannot identify priority gaps or align actions across stakeholders. (AFI 2024)
Interventions that have successfully addressed this barrier
The following Exemplar represents one evidence-based interventions that has shown success in addressing this particular barrier. There may be other Exemplars for this barrier in the larger Barriers & Exemplars Analysis compendium deck.
