THE Gender Finance Inclusion Report recently released by the Reserve Bank of Fiji has found that that except for a development bank and a microfinance institution, none of the financial institutions in Fiji has a dedicated strategy to serve women-owned MSMEs beyond financial literacy and business training support.
It stated that in fact, none of the commercial banks and only one credit institution tracked gender-disaggregated data on its business portfolio.
“This is both a cause of and a reason for not having a dedicated strategy – as they do not collect analytics on their female business customers, they do not have insights on demand for products and performance of this segment that may prompt and encourage a dedicated strategy,” the report stated.
“Broadly, most financial institutions do not see the need to distinguish between women and men-owned MSMEs and interviews among financial officers highlighted a commonly held perception of women-owned businesses as mostly informal and micro and of limited interest and relevance to licensed financial institutions.
“FDB (Fiji Development Bank) and Merchant Finance, together with SPBD (South Pacific Business Development) are notable exceptions.
While Merchant Finance does not currently have a dedicated strategy, it is currently conducting a market assessment to inform the design of specific products for women-owned businesses, with the support of external partners.”
It stated that several of the financial institutions surveyed indicated ongoing efforts to serve the MSME sector, either through new products such as the case of FDB, Bank of Baroda and Tower Insurance, or through dedicated initiatives such as financial literacy campaigns and digital payment platforms for Westpac.
It stated some of those were still in pilot stage but signal nonetheless an interest in bringing innovative solutions to serve small business customers.
It added the parametric insurance product offered by FDB and Tower Insurance was an exciting development because it combined gender and climate finance goals, “both extremely relevant for Fiji”.
According to the survey, women are majority owners of 30 per cent of all MSMEs registered in Fiji and joint owners of another 13 per cent of registered MSMEs.
The share of businesses majority owned by women is larger among micro enterprises at 38 per cent but remains a considerable 15 per cent even among medium-sized enterprises.
Another 13 per cent of MSMEs are jointly owned, with 90 per cent of that having equal female-male ownership and all of them at least 25 per cent female ownership.
The report also stated that the total number of women who own and run businesses in Fiji is much larger – it is
estimated there are about 40,000 women in informal employment, many of whom might be running a business, and some of those businesses may become formal.
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Note: This article was first published under the headline: No dedicated strategy for women MSMEs in Page 14 of the print version of The Fiji Times dated Tuesday, September 30, 2025
