15 December 2023, Ulaanbaatar
A series of gender trainings was conducted for the partner banks throughout 2023 within the framework of EBRD’s GEFF Mongolia. Over 40 managers and loan officers of Khan Bank and XacBank both from headquarters and branches participated in the trainings.
“The gender trainings aim at supporting gender-equal access to finance approach in our partner banks, meaning that the banks need to be fully aware of the different needs of women and men when designing the banking services,” says Nomin Lkhagvasuren, the Gender and Marketing Expert for GEFF Mongolia Facility Consultant Team, who has led the trainings. “The banks claim they have the same requirements for women and men but this approach might not be gender responsive due to different needs of women and men. Hence we suggest a more targeted approach, more so that women represent a huge potential market for a whole range of banking services, including climate finance”.
Prior to designing the gender trainings, the Facility Consultant Team conducted a Gender Baseline Assessment which supports the implementation of the GEFF project in Mongolia. The Gender Baseline Assessment has pointed out at several bottlenecks and barriers to women’s access to green finances and technologies in Mongolia. The study has shown that the gender barriers were not only related to banks’ lending rules and procedures but also to attitudes and stereotypes of the banking personnel.
“Although we firmly believe that our bank does not discriminate against women clients, we have learned at the training that there can be many hidden barriers to access to finance that we do not necessarily notice in our everyday functioning,” says Erdenejargal Jalzav, the Bichil sub-branch manager of Khan Bank. “Especially it was eye-opening to see that we often might have unconscious stereotypes that we should be aware of.”
Although both Khan Bank and XacBank actively work towards increasing their women clientele base, still the sizes of loans issued to women remain small. As these banks function nationwide, more targeted outreach to women clients, especially in rural areas, has been advised by the Facility Consultant Team.
The gender trainings have been conducted interactively with the use of pre-training and post- training quizzes. The trainings also had a train-the-trainer component to allow partner banks of GEFF Mongolia to further deliver similar trainings to their staff at branches by internal trainers of the banks themselves.
“The training gave us an opportunity to revise our practices and even personal stereotypes and be aware of those, so we can better understand the needs of men and women clients and better target our products for them “, says Narantsatsral Chinbat, the Senior Manager of XacBank’s Branch Management Department. “We will conduct the gender trainings for the personnel in our branches throughout the next year.”
As of 2023, Khan Bank and XacBank have issued 68 green loans for a total amount of USD 23.2 million, with 40% of the financed companies (27 out of 68) being women-led businesses. Additional 41 projects have been approved for financing with green loans for the total amount of USD 32 million.
GEFF Mongolia Facility Consultant Team also developed a video covering the gender topic including some of the findings of the Gender Baseline Assessment:
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