Build credit histories for unbanked women entrepreneurs

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

Aktif Bank is the largest privately owned investment bank operating in Türkiye's financial services sector.

Women who have never held a financial product face a set of barriers that reinforce one another: limited financial knowledge, difficulty obtaining credit, restricted use of digital channels and economic insecurity. The mechanism is circular. Without a borrowing record a woman running a very small business cannot be scored by a bank, and without a score she cannot borrow, so she stays outside the formal system however well the business performs.

The bank treats access to financial services as a component of inclusive growth rather than as a philanthropic activity, and allocates long-term resources on that basis. Equality of opportunity in access to financial services is set out as one of the elements of the bank's sustainable development approach.

The programme, Ekonomide Aktif Kadınlar (Active Women in Economy), was launched in 2022, which is the base year for impact measurement. It is delivered with the Turkish Grameen Microfinance Programme (TGMP), a non-governmental microfinance organisation whose field network reaches 68 provinces, and Experian, contributes financial literacy, financial profile-building and capacity-development expertise.

Location of the initiative: Türkiye, across the 63 provinces covered by the microfinance partner's field network for the Bank

The credit component is interest-free microcredit for women who are outside the financial system or who have only limited access to financial services.

The capability component is training and mentoring. Participants receive financial literacy support and guidance on running and growing a micro-enterprise, so that the money arrives with the ability to use it rather than on its own.

The credit identity component is what separates the model from conventional microcredit. Repayment behaviour on the interest-free loan is used to build a financial profile for a borrower who previously had none, so that a woman who completes a cycle leaves it with the beginnings of a credit score and can subsequently be assessed by mainstream lenders. Inclusion is therefore designed to be permanent rather than to last as long as the programme funds her.

Delivery relies on a division of labour between the three parties. The bank provides the funding and the banking relationship. The microfinance partner identifies the target group, carries out needs analysis and reaches women entrepreneurs through the field network it already operates across 68 provinces, which is a reach no single bank branch structure would replicate for this customer segment. Experian supports the financial literacy, profile-building and capacity-development content.

Because the participants are dispersed across the country and often unfamiliar with digital banking, adaptation to digital channels is treated as one of the outcomes to be achieved rather than as a precondition for taking part.

Figure 1: Value chain impact map of the programme, from inputs and partners through core activities and direct outputs to outcomes and impact for each stakeholder group

Figure 2: Geographic reach map: the programme operates in 63 provinces across Türkiye through the microfinance partner's field network

Sustainability impact

Climate

The initiative does not target greenhouse gas emissions. It changes neither the Scope 1 emissions of the bank's own operations nor the Scope 2 emissions of the electricity it purchases, and no reduction in value chain emissions is claimed for the 2022 to 2025 period covered by the reported results.

The sustainability impact of the initiative is social and is reported under social impact below.

Social

The measured effect is financial inclusion for women who had previously used no financial product or service.

Between 2022 and 2025 the programme reached more than 5,000 women and provided TRY 16 million of microcredit support. The repayment performance on that portfolio is reported at a 100% return rate, which is the clearest available evidence that the excluded segment is creditworthy once capability support is attached to the loan.

Reach is national rather than local: the field network operates in 68 provinces, so participation is not confined to the largest cities where financial services are already dense. The target for 2026 is to reach 6,000 women.

Impact is tracked in four dimensions rather than by disbursement volume alone: integration of women into the financial system, their capacity to sustain and develop entrepreneurial activity, their level of financial literacy, and their adaptation to digital channels. The base year is 2022 and measurement has been carried out regularly since the programme started.

The evidence base is the microfinance partner's field records, participant feedback, training attendance data and credit performance indicators, reported through field studies, feedback mechanisms and participant monitoring processes run by the project partners.

The wider social result is that women previously outside the financial system have been supported into economic activity, and that their integration into the system is anchored in a credit record they now own.

Business impact

Benefits

The programme gives the bank a working relationship with a customer segment that conventional scoring excludes, and a body of evidence about how that segment behaves. A 100% repayment rate on interest-free microcredit is a commercially relevant finding, because it indicates that the barrier for these customers was the absence of a record rather than an absence of capacity to repay.

Each completed cycle creates a scoreable customer who did not exist in the system before, which builds a future addressable market rather than only a social outcome.

The collaboration also gives the bank access to a field network across 68 provinces and to microfinance operating experience that it would otherwise have to build. Working alongside a microfinance organisation and a credit information specialist transfers know-how in reaching and assessing very small borrowers.

Internally, the programme makes the bank's stated position on equality of opportunity visible in a measurable form, which supports its assured sustainability reporting and its positioning on inclusive growth with investors and regulators.

Costs

The principal cost is the interest foregone. Because the microcredit is interest-free, the bank carries the funding cost of the portfolio without lending margin, and that cost has to be planned as a programme budget line rather than as a lending loss.

On top of that sit the delivery costs: training and mentoring content, mentoring time, the field operations of the microfinance partner, the financial literacy and profile-building work of the credit information partner, and the monitoring, feedback collection and reporting that produce the impact data.

The model also creates a dependency. Growth is limited by the capital the bank chooses to allocate each year and by the field capacity of the partner, so scale is a management decision rather than a market outcome. Senior management support and long-term resource allocation are therefore preconditions, not enablers.

Costs are contained in three ways: by using a partner's existing field network instead of building distribution, by combining the credit with capability support so that repayment performance remains strong, and by reusing the same monitoring data for programme management and for external sustainability reporting.

Impact beyond sustainability and business

Co-benefits

Income generated by the participating entrepreneurs stays in local economies, so the effect extends to households and communities in the provinces covered rather than to the borrowers alone.

Financial literacy acquired by a participant tends to be applied to household decisions as well as business decisions, and adaptation to digital channels gives women access to services beyond credit.

For the financial sector, the repayment record produces transferable evidence: it demonstrates to other lenders that this segment can be served commercially once a credit identity exists.

Potential side-effects

Credit offered on its own to borrowers with no financial record carries a risk of over-indebtedness. The programme manages this by attaching training, mentoring and profile building to every loan, but the risk returns if a replicating organisation offers the credit component alone.

Delivery is concentrated in a single field partner. That concentration is what makes national reach affordable, and it is also the main operational dependency: the quality of targeting, needs analysis and follow-up rests with one organisation.

A 100 per cent repayment rate should be read alongside the group-based microfinance method that produces it. Sustaining that performance requires continuous field presence, and a replicating organisation without it should expect a different result.

Typical business profile

The model suits banks and other regulated financial institutions that want to serve customers with no credit history and that are able to allocate a portfolio to lending which produces no interest income.

It is most relevant where a microfinance organisation with an established field network already operates, because the reach that makes the economics work comes from that network rather than from branch infrastructure.

Delivery engages product management, credit risk and scoring, sustainability, human resources and communications functions, together with TGMP as the microfinance delivery partner and Experian as the partner supporting financial literacy, financial profile building and capacity development.

Approach

1. Define the exclusion rather than the product gap: Establish which customers sit outside the financial system and why - no borrowing record, no score, limited use of digital channels, economic insecurity - so that the design starts from the barrier and not from an existing product.

2. Partner with an organisation that already has field presence: A bank cannot reach dispersed micro-entrepreneurs through branches, so work with a microfinance organisation whose field network already covers the target geography, in this case 68 provinces, and let it carry out targeting, needs analysis and participant access.

3. Remove the price of borrowing first: Offer the microcredit interest-free so that debt service does not consume the margin of a very small business, and budget the foregone interest as a programme cost that senior management approves annually.

4. Attach capability support to every loan: Deliver financial literacy training and mentoring alongside the credit, using a partner with expertise in financial education, so that borrowers gain the ability to convert working capital into sustained income.

5. Convert repayment behaviour into a credit identity: Record the performance of each participant so that a borrower who began with no history ends the cycle with a financial profile that mainstream lenders can assess, which is what makes the inclusion permanent.

6. Fix the measurement frame before disbursing: Set the base year, in this case 2022, and define the dimensions to be tracked - integration into the financial system, entrepreneurial capacity, financial literacy and digital adaptation - so that reporting is comparable from the first cycle.

7. Use repayment as evidence, not only as risk control: Publish the portfolio's repayment performance, because a full return rate is the argument that persuades internal risk functions and other lenders that the segment is bankable.

8. Set a forward reach target and review the model against it: Commit to a stated number of women for the following year, in this case 6,000 for 2026, and use participant feedback and field studies to adjust content and delivery between cycles.

Stakeholders involved

• Project leads: Senior management sponsors the strategic direction and development of the programme and approves the long-term resource allocation that an interest-free portfolio requires. Day-to-day implementation is run by the relevant business units in coordination with the project partners, so that the programme is managed as part of the bank's sustainability approach rather than as a corporate social responsibility campaign.

• Company functions: Retail banking, sustainability and communications functions work to a shared cycle. Retail banking handles disbursement and repayment monitoring, sustainability owns the indicator set and reporting, and communications supports organising training events. All business units are responsible for programme strategy, purpose and delivery.

• Main providers: Experian supplies the financial literacy, financial profile building and capacity development expertise that supports the training and mentoring components, and contributes the methodology for turning repayment behaviour into a usable financial profile.

• Other: TGMP, a non-governmental microfinance organisation, operates the field network across 68 provinces and carries out target group identification, needs analysis and access to women entrepreneurs. Participating women entrepreneurs are treated as partners rather than as recipients: field interviews, participant evaluations and needs analyses feed directly into the content and delivery methods, and the financial and operational difficulties they report shape how the programme develops.

Key parameters to consider

The base year is 2022 and measurement has run continuously since then, so the reported figures cover a three-year operating period rather than a single campaign.

The credit is interest-free, which is the parameter that determines both the participant economics and the sponsor's cost. Reach depends on the partner's field network, currently 68 provinces, and the group-based microfinance method is what sustains the repayment performance.

The forward commitment is 6,000 women in 2026, and the reported cumulative position at the end of 2025 is more than 5,000 women and TRY 16 million of microcredit.

Implementation and operations tips

Financial inclusion fails when it is treated as a disbursement target. The element that changes a participant's position permanently is the credit record she leaves with, so design the data trail before designing the loan.

Do not build distribution. The cost of reaching micro-entrepreneurs in 68 provinces through a bank's own channels would make the model unviable; a microfinance partner with an existing field network converts that fixed cost into a partnership.

Track literacy and digital adaptation separately from reach. A participant counted as reached but unable to use digital channels has not been included in the system in any durable sense.

Report the repayment rate. It is the single figure that moves the internal conversation from social contribution to commercial evidence, and it is what allows the allocation to be renewed.