The women banks still ignore

There are stories we encounter in passing, and then there are stories that stay with us. The journey of Shanaz Sultana is one of them. It is also the story of thousands of women across Bangladesh building businesses from imagination, grit and digital communities stitched together through WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages.

Shanaz returned from the UK with a degree and ambitions for Dhaka corporate life. Motherhood intervened and rewrote that script. At the moment society expected her to step back, she chose reinvention. Shanaz launched “Rongdhonu Creation”, a boutique rooted in hand-painted textiles, determined to retain economic agency. What began as a small-scale experiment now employs ten women. Yet beneath the vibrant fabrics lies a reality many overlook. Shanaz was unbanked. Her business survived because of Facebook, not because any bank believed in her potential.

I met her at the Midas Centre during a winter mela organised by Rangta. The hall was alive with women-led businesses operating from living rooms and kitchen tables. Travelling across Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Narayanganj, I encountered the same rhythm. These gatherings reveal something important. Demand is real, the market is large, and women-led micro enterprises have already outgrown traditional finance.

If Shanaz is the protagonist, the antagonist is not a person but a paradigm. It is a banking mindset that evaluates entrepreneurs through documents they do not possess, transaction histories they cannot produce and collateral they may never own. Bangladesh spends over Tk 20,000 crore a year on cash management, yet more than one crore women already save through bKash and Nagad. Mobile financial services processed Tk 17.37 lakh crore in 2024, but many of the women driving this digital shift remain locked out of formal banking.

World Bank data shows Bangladeshi women are 40 percent more likely to save digitally through mobile financial services than through banks. The reason is simple. Mobile finance offers privacy, autonomy and control. Banks demand formal income statements, trade licences and predictable cash flows, metrics that rarely align with home-based businesses. These entrepreneurs rely on reputation, Facebook engagement and trust-based networks. This is not a failure of women. It is a failure of imagination within financial institutions.

In Bangladesh, only 7.35 percent of CMSME loans go to women-led firms, despite their strong repayment discipline. Alternative, data-driven credit scoring is no longer optional. It is an economic necessity. Shanaz does not need a bank statement to validate her business. Her credibility lives in customer reviews, repeat purchases and the strength of her social network.

Critics argue that banks cannot lend on informal sales patterns, citing fraud and compliance risks. That concern is valid, but incomplete. Exclusion does not remove risk. It merely pushes it outside the regulated system. The greater danger lies in not innovating and becoming irrelevant to an economy that has already moved on.

This is how platform economies scale worldwide. In Brazil, Nubank built 100 million customers by prioritising behavioural signals over paperwork. In Kenya, M Pesa transformed financial inclusion through mobile transaction histories. Bangladesh has every ingredient needed to follow a similar path.

What is needed now is intelligent integration. Banks could partner with networks such as “Rangta”, “Adda Chole” and “Her E Trade”, using seasonal melas as onboarding grounds. Mobile teams could open digital accounts, offer micro DPS plans starting at Tk 500 a month and extend working capital loans based on digital transaction patterns.

Women entrepreneurs are powerful multipliers of social change. When a woman earns, household nutrition improves. When she saves, children’s education advances. When she leads, she widens the horizon of what an entire generation believes is possible.

The future of Bangladesh’s financial sector will be co-authored in living rooms, winter melas and Facebook shops. This is not one woman’s story. It is a national one, an untapped reservoir of potential waiting to be recognised. The infrastructure exists. The entrepreneurs are ready. What remains is institutional courage to make the informal economy formally visible.

The writer is a digital banking and fintech strategist