Advans Ghana continues to advance its mission of financial inclusion through innovative products and targeted programs. In this interview, we explore how the institution is leveraging microfinance for women to meet the unique needs of its female clients, while also strengthening its portfolio of micro financing in Africa. The discussion highlights initiatives such as the Edu Save product and tailored training programs, designed to empower women to save effectively for their children’s education and build sustainable businesses.

What motivated the creation of the Edu Save product and the training program for saving accounts to finance school fees ?

So the savings products for our women clients purposely for education is a need-based product. Today, our women clients represent between 60 to 70 percent of the clients in our portfolio. We had done several workshops, focus group discussions, and one of the common needs that came out of these discussions, workshops, focus group discussions, was the need for women to have a dedicated product that would help them to save towards their children’s education. And so it was based on this reason that we saw the need to develop a product that addresses or responds to the needs of our women clients.

How do we anticipate these initiatives will be received by the women in Ghana, and what positive impacts do we hope to see?

So I must say that attached to the rollout or the launch of the product is to also train our women to build that capacity to deposit, build that savings habit. And so, I mean, when the product is rolled out, we expect an excess of about 1,300 women will enroll on the product. We expect in excess of 500 accounts to be opened. And also in the gender program, which we are launching very soon, we expect to also train about 200 women on non-financial services in the first year of the launch of the program.

What are the future goals of the gender program in Ghana, and how do we plan to further improve service quality and client satisfaction?

The gender program mainly targeting women, is focusing really on how we address or respond to the needs of our women in Advans Ghana, Ghana as a whole. In the program our various projects that would respond to these needs that I am talking about. One of the key projects we want to roll out is the capacity building project, which specifically talks about offering training for our women on basic bookkeeping, basic accounting processes just to formalize their business.
On service quality, there are a number of actions that we have done already, hoping to improve our quality of service for our clients. Latter part of last year, we did a mystery shopping exercise just to assess our customer service experience in all the networks. Subsequent after that, we shared these findings and information with all the networks, with all the commercial staff, with all our front offices for them to be aware of the way we serve our customers.
We have also further on offered training for all our staff on customer service protocols, customer service tips. We have created a unique teams platform that engages all our staff on day-to-day activities and protocols that they can deploy in the branches to improve the service experience. There are other solutions that also interface with customers that we are also working on to consistently improve and make services better and make the experience better.

The rollout of the Edu Save product and the gender-focused training program demonstrates Advans Ghana’s commitment to enhancing client empowerment and promoting financial literacy. By integrating services that respond directly to women’s needs, Advans not only supports the growth of microfinance and women, but also contributes to the broader development of microcredit Africa, ensuring that women entrepreneurs can formalize, grow, and sustain their businesses over the long term.