Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan launched a training program “Gender-Sensitive Financing and Promoting Gender Diversity in the Financial Sector” in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for representatives of the financial sector of Uzbekistan.

This seminar is part of the implementation of the joint Action Plan, which is aimed at increasing gender mainstreaming in the financial sector and will be implemented during 2021-2023. All planned activities are in line with the Financial Inclusion Alliance Network’s Denarau Action Plan (DAP) to improve women’s access to financial services. The Central Bank of Uzbekistan has been an official member of the network since 2017.

During the seminar, the experience of financial institutions that are members of the World Women’s Bank network and the Global Financial Alliance for Women were presented.

A representative from the Global Financial Alliance for Women highlighted efforts in more than 135 countries to create innovative, comprehensive programs that provide financial institutions with the tools they need to achieve better services for women entrepreneurs, including access to capital, information, education and markets.

Participants were interested in the experience of Turkish banks in servicing women-owned enterprises, which account for 40 percent of registered small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. The experience of Garanti Bank, Turkish Economic Bank and several others has demonstrated that high quality services for the female segment of the business can be a good business opportunity with direct economic benefits such as higher growth in the number of clients and a lower non-performing loans (NPL) ratio.

As noted, with a high level of service provided by financial institutions, women demonstrate a high level of loyalty. Additional benefits for financial institutions include offering positioning as a bank for women in competitive markets, helping to build a financial institution’s brand reputation, and a first mover advantage as it becomes a bank of choice for women.

For financial regulators such as the Central Bank of Uzbekistan, women’s financial inclusion is also essential to meet the global commitment to the fifth UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5): achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Moreover, according to a McKinsey study, women’s equality fueled by financial inclusion could add roughly $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025, representing significant untapped potential.

Given that the Central Bank of Uzbekistan is working on the development of a National Strategy for Ensuring Financial Inclusion, the integration of gender approaches is also one of the key tasks in the light of the National Strategy for Ensuring Gender Equality until 2030 adopted by the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The workshop also featured country initiatives on the implementation of the UK Investing in Women Code (IWC) by NatWest and the UK Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter to encourage the financial services industry to improve gender balance in senior management. The Charter has now been signed by over 400 financial institutions, covering 950,000 employees across the sector.

According to research by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), balanced representation of men and women in decision-making is critical to ensuring the sustainability and resilience of gender-sensitive and responsive public policies, which showed that firms’ financial performance is better when the representation of women and men on their boards is more equal.

The representative of Ernst & Young company shared the results of a global study on assessing gender diversity and the need for an integrated approach to promoting women leadership training initiatives and gender-sensitive human resource development policies.

During the seminar, representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development informed the representatives of commercial banks of the Republic of Uzbekistan about the conditions for participation in the Central Asian Program “Women in Business” for financing enterprises headed by women. Ms. Ainura Guppy, Deputy Director of the Department of Russia and Central Asia Financial Institutions, provided detailed information on lending conditions, technical assistance to financial institutions that work with women’s businesses. Deputy Director of the Department of Gender and Economic Inclusion Ms Oksana Pak presented the new services offered by the EBRD for financial institutions on conducting gender audits, a specialized educational program for financial institutions on eliminating gender stereotypes and also assistance in passing the UN Women international certification in accordance with the UN Principles for Enlargement of women’s empowerment (WEP).