How State Bank digital account benefitting women- concessional financing scheme for women
State bank of Pakistan is all set to step a forward by introducing digital account opening. The SBP digital account opening will provide a great benefit to women from easy account opening to get concessional financing for their plans. SBP enable people to open accounts at banks without them to be physically present. Pakistan state bank had already allowed overseas Pakistanis to open bank accounts without physically visiting branches and embassies in their host countries through Roshan digital account.
The SBP governor, Dr. Reza Baqir, said “Digital account opening is a step forward. We have a policy to inaugurate this facility locally and to allow digital onboarding.”
SBP chairman brought out that there were complaints about opening new bank accounts, especially housewives lodged complaints.They argued that banks asked them for their source of income or their husband’s source of income to open an account which is sometimes difficult to show.
The digital banking would allow women to get their account open easily. By using the data that will be utilizing at women accounts, SBP would be able to formulate better policies for them. SBP is also offering concessional financing and low cost loans through the central bank for women.
“The concessional financing offers women to get loans of up to Rs5 million at 5% interest rate. There is a 60% risk coverage being provided to banks. This means the traditional issues of (submitting) collateral (for loan acquisition) can be considerably overcome.”
Most women don't know of SBP concessional scheme being provided by the government. Only less than a thousand women have taken loans of this scheme to date. The central bank is also making attempts to increase the women crew up to 20% in the banking sector by the end of three years.