Institutional gender mainstreaming and strengthening of gender-lens investing activities in Jamaica

Context

The Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) facilitates economic growth and development across all sectors and includes all Jamaicans, regardless of socio-economic strata, in its quest to meet the Vision 2030 goal of making Jamaica “the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business. To this end, DBJ provides access to low-cost financing, partial loan guarantees, renewable energy solutions, private equity and venture capital, technical assistance and capacity development as well as privatization services and public-private partnership opportunities.

DBJ has requested support from the ICR Facility to refine the DBJ’s product offerings to cater specifically to the needs of female entrepreneurs towards removing the barriers to financing. This support aligns with the requirements of the DBJ’s Gender Equality Policy and Action Plan (GEPAP), the National Policy for Gender Equality of 2011 and the MSME Policy of 2018.

Objective

The ICR Facility is providing tailor-made technical assistance to DBJ to strengthen its internal gender operations and client-facing gender-lens investing activities, to ultimately better serve women-led MSMEs with improved access to finance.

This intervention comprises three main areas of support:

Institutional gender mainstreaming. DBJ will capture its current institutional progress with regards to gender, including both internal aspects, for example HR, and client-facing measures, including all core business lines. DBJ will identify approaches for gender mainstreaming for each business line, as well as to enhance the gender equality policy and action plan.
Amending the M&E framework to become gender responsive. Capturing, reporting and evaluating impactful data is a vital step in being able to better tailor services to reach more women as clients. DBJ will transform its current M&E framework to better incorporate crucial data, set key performance indicators, and redesign standard operating procedures.

Identifying alternative forms of collateral and refining financial products to suit women-led businesses. DBJ will identify tailored collateral for women and will have recommendations on how to include alternative collateral in its financial products.

Results

Upon completion of this intervention, DBJ will have:

Conducted an institutional gender assessment,
Developed a gender strategy, and have a revised gender equality policy and action plan,
Have identified approaches for gender mainstreaming in its core business lines,
Amended the M&E framework to become gender-responsive,
Identified alternative collateral forms for women,
Equipped staff members with capacity building on gender mainstreaming.