Deadline: 30-Jul-23
Applications are now open for the Financial Innovations for Women Affected by Migration (FIWAM) program, funded by the Impact-Linked Fund for Gender Inclusive Fintech, to provide Impact-Linked Finance and technical assistance to Fintechs to incentivize a stronger focus on gender transformative outcomes for financial inclusion.
Financial Innovations for Women Affected by Migration (FIWAM) is a Growth Program for later-stage fintech startups that have an impact focus on women migrants and women affected by migration.
The FIWAM Growth Program will support up to 15 startups per region from Asia, MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa, over three months with personalized technical assistance that:
- Enhances growth: using experimentation methodology and key growth concepts, learn how to sustainably grow your business
- Increases your impact: through the implementation of an impact management framework that helps you track the right metrics and tell your impact story
- Strengthens network connections: through the extensive Seedstars community of mentors, experts, and international development organizations, they connect you with the right people to guide you on your entrepreneurial journey.
Challenges
- They are looking to support startups building solutions to the following challenges faced by women migrants and women affected by migration:
- Lack of access to financial services:
- Solutions that are improving access to banking services for women affected by migration, which include – identification solutions, solutions that allow for bank access from their country of origin, solutions that provide access to digital services, solutions that provide access to low-cost remittance products, solutions that provide mechanisms for alternative credit scores, solutions that provide access to unified and open Application Programme Interfaces (APIs).
- Language and Literacy Barriers:
- Solutions building products specifically for women affected by migration with a focus on improving digital and financial literacy, solutions improving migrant’s access to financial services, educational solutions that increase awareness of products available for migrants, solutions improving access and awareness of government services, policies that are targeted towards migrant populations.
- Lack of Trust:
- Solutions that are built with a deep understanding of local contexts; solutions that utilize informal economy practices; solutions that build their product and marketing plans for migrant populations; solutions that offer social and collaborative lending opportunities.
- Constraining external environment:
- Solutions that allow for digital forums for women affected by migration to connect, mobilize and raise grievances to the concerned authorities for resolutions; legal tech platforms that make it more accessible and affordable for the refugees and migrants to seek help against legal malpractices or policy gaps; cross-border insurance and pension products that allow migrants access social protection services from their country of origin.
- Unsteady income stream and limited job opportunities:
- Solutions that are creating innovative, affordable and more accessible financial products and services for migrants – low interest credit and loans, low ticket insurance products, social and collaborative lending solutions; solutions that facilitate learning and skills training to improve the employability of migrants; solutions that improve market access for migrant merchants and producers; solutions that facilitate the success or growth of migrant-led small and medium size enterprises such as point-of-sale terminals, payments processing, digital inventory management and more.
- Lack of access to financial services:
Benefits
- Capacity Building
- Participate in cross-regional training sessions that help you set and achieve growth milestones through group sessions with finance and migration experts, to attain investment potential and scale your impact
- Mentorship
- One-on-one coaching with an industry experts focused on helping you overcome your biggest business hurdles and increasing the reach of your financial solutions to women migrants and women affected by migration
- Peer-to-peer network
- Match with a founder in your track, allowing for knowledge-sharing and collaboration opportunities
- Visibility
- Exposure for yourself and your company on the program website and program marketing activities
- Access to Demo Day Events
- For each regional track they will hold roundtable discussions as well as pitch events for an audience of potential strategic and financial partners
- Consideration for Funding
- All selected companies will be screened for eligibility to receive funding from the Impact-Linked Fund for Gender-Inclusive Fintech
Eligibility Criteria
- Must be a for-profit entity and have operations in a Sub-Saharan African, MENA, or Asia (if your company is incorporated outside of these regions, but your operations are focused there you ARE still eligible to apply)
- Provide a fintech solution that already serves or has the potential to serve women migrants or women affected by migration
- Have product market fit and be at the growth stage
- Generating a monthly revenue of ±$10K USD
- Woman-led companies as well as founders who are women migrants are highly encouraged to apply
For more information, visit Seedstars.