What does it take to move an entire financial sector toward gender equality? In Mexico, the answer is emerging: shared accountability, institutional reform, and collective action.
A diagnostic commissioned by Mexico’s Ministry of Finance in 2023 revealed that only 41% of financial institutions reported analyzing or diagnosing the gender pay gap, while just 60% claimed to have equal pay protocols in place. However, this International Women’s Day, there is genuine cause for optimism. Thirteen of Mexico’s leading financial institutions — spanning commercial and development banks, credit unions, microfinance providers, pension funds, insurers, and Fintechs — have joined a first-of-its-kind Community of Practice (CoP) to fundamentally change how they serve women customers by changing their institutions from the inside. Launched in December 2025 under the facilitation of CGAP, the CoP is not a product pilot or a marketing initiative. It is a structured, long-term commitment to institutional reform in support of gender equality and women’s financial inclusion.
That distinction matters.
Mexico has a strong record on gender equality
Mexico has built real political momentum for gender equality over recent years, with President Claudia Sheinbaum recently declaring, “It is women’s time,” in her October 2024 inauguration speech before Congress. The speech was followed by an amendment to Article 4 of Mexico’s constitution, guaranteeing equal pay, aiming to eliminate wage gaps, and requiring the State to remove structural barriers that limit women’s rights.
The country’s financial sector has made strides as well. Mexico is one of the few countries where regular financial inclusion surveys are conducted, and where financial institutions have been mandated to report sex-disaggregated data to the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) since 2016. This has helped reveal clear gender trends and gaps. Mexico’s reverse gender gap in deposit accounts masks the fact that more needs to be done to help women plan for the future, and weather shocks: only 34% of women have savings for retirement, compared with 51% of men, and only 18% of women hold insurance products, compared with 28% of men. Only 28% of women in Mexico report owning a home. Among commercial banks, 38% of mortgage loans go to women, whereas in government-owned development banks, only 7% of mortgage loans go to women.
Regulators also found that women’s access to credit did not reflect their strong repayment performance. In 2021, regulators reduced loan-loss provisions for loans to women, leading to modest gains, including slightly lower interest rates and larger loan amounts.
In 2022, the Ministry of Finance launched CIIGEF, the Committee for Gender Equality in Financial Institutions — a unique, inter-institutional platform for coordination and action on gender equality in finance. The diagnostics and data CIIGEF have produced have given Mexico’s financial sector a shared, honest picture of where it falls short: on average, only 30% of respondent institutions have a gender strategy with indicators to measure progress; 14% have at least one product designed specifically for women, and only 43% consider that women need financial products with distinct characteristics compared to those offered to men.
Collective action as the engine
Many financial institutions respond to the inclusion challenge by launching a product – maybe a women’s loan, or a savings account with a pink logo. These pilots come and go, with most failing to scale because they treat a systemic problem as a design problem.
So, at CIIGEF’s request, CGAP and the World Bank Group developed a set of 10 guidelines to help financial institutions adopt a genuine gender perspective — not just in their product catalogues, but holistically, in their organizational culture, data practices, staffing, and governance. The guidelines recognize that women represent a distinct, profitable, and chronically underserved customer segment, and that serving them well requires confronting gender biases embedded in institutional processes.
Yet, global experience shows guidelines alone don’t change institutions. Implementation is resource-intensive and easy to deprioritize. Several financial sector authorities have put different approaches in place to assist with this.
In Ecuador, the regulation of community-based financial institutions mandates that such providers adopt gender strategies with measurable goals, and that they publish gender-related indicators on their websites, ranging from average loan amount granted to women to the percentage of internal promotions granted to women. In Zambia, the supervisory authority trains banks and digital financial service (DFS) providers on the use of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) FAMOS tool, and during its routine supervision process, incorporates checks on findings and changes being implemented as a result.
In Mexico, the approach is focused on incremental approaches and collective learning, thus the Community of Practice (CoP) was born. The CoP brings participating institutions into a collaborative space to share experiences, methodologies, real-world obstacles, and practical solutions. It creates momentum that no single institution could sustain alone — and accountability that keeps the work moving.
A unique way to learn together
“Closing the gender gap in the financial sector requires intentionality and strategy,” according to Judith Nieto, Industry Relations Senior Manager at Clip and member of the CoP. “My commitment is not only to improve the environment for all Clippers, but to create a roadmap that helps more financial institutions accelerate their path toward equality.”
All 13 participating institutions have already completed a self-diagnostic to assess their current state and identify priorities. From that exercise, five guidelines emerged as the most strategically urgent across the cohort:
- Developing a gender policy (Guideline 2)
- Analyzing women’s demand (Guideline 7)
- Implementing that policy (Guideline 3)
- Adapting or creating products (Guideline 8)
- Training staff (Guideline 5)
Over the next 18 months, the CoP will work through expert presentations, case studies, and focused design sprints — all oriented toward producing solutions that participants can actually implement. The lessons generated will have relevance well beyond Mexico, offering a replicable model for the Latin America region and globally.
“Women’s financial inclusion does not happen by chance. It is built through intention, strategy, and collaboration,” says Perla Martínez, Senior Chief of Culture at Caja Popular Mexicana and member of the CoP. “Participating in this Community of Practice allows us to strengthen our commitment to building a more inclusive organization, where equity is not just rhetoric, but an everyday practice.”
Institutional reform is unglamorous work. It doesn’t generate headlines the way a product launch does. But it’s what makes the headlines sustainable. Mexico’s financial sector — with the Ministry of Finance leading the way and the 13 institutions willing to be held accountable — is doing the harder, more important thing. That is worth celebrating on International Women’s Day, and worth watching in the months ahead.
Beyond Mexico, CGAP is supporting national coalitions in Morocco and India, where each country creates its own unique structure and path to collective action address structural barriers for women’s full inclusion in the financial sector.
