Institutional gender mainstreaming and strengthening of gender-lens investing activities in the Federated States of Micronesia

Context

There is a high proportion of informal women-led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Federated States of Micronesia. Formalisation of these women-led MSMEs is made difficult because of existing restrictions to accessing commercial finance, partially due to the level of financial literacy and level of asset ownership among women.

The Federated States of Micronesia Development Bank (FSMDB) has requested support from the ICR Facility to review and improve how the institution is currently approaching gender in all of its operations. FSMDB offers a range of services, covering business loans, consumer loans and home energy loans.

Objective

The ICR Facility is providing tailor-made technical assistance to FSMDB to strengthen its internal gender operations and client-facing gender-lens investing activities, to ultimately better promote gender equitable development in its mandate to provide all banking functions to stimulate growth and accelerate private sector development.

This intervention comprises two main areas of support:

Institutional gender mainstreaming. FSMDB will capture its current institutional progress with regards to gender, including both internal aspects, for example HR, and client-facing measures, for example the design of products and services. FSMDB will establish a plan to tackle the existing gaps.
Amending the Management Information System (MIS) 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. FSMDB will transform its current MIS to better incorporate crucial data and set key performance indicators.

Results

Upon completion of this intervention, FSMDB will have:

Conducted an institutional gender assessment
Developed a gender policy, gender strategy, and action plan
Amended the existing MIS to become gender-responsive

The ICR Facility helped us with a policy, and we created a new strategy that really addresses the needs of the islands’ women. We now have a strategic action plan […], and I’ve just recently hired a gender specialist to help implement what we have set out in the action plan and to make sure that we increase our assistance to women.

Anna Mendiola, CEO, Federated States of Micronesia Development Bank