Driven by demographic, societal and legal shifts, women are projected to control nearly 40% of investable wealth by 2030 globally. This unprecedented transfer of wealth has the potential to reshape global capital markets, yet ownership still needs to be converted to decision power.
As women gain greater financial influence, what opportunities are in store for innovation and economic growth?
This session was developed in collaboration with Fortune Magazine.
This is a livestreamed session. Please arrive 15 minutes early as the doors will close at the scheduled time.
At the World Economic Forum session “Women at the Finance Frontier,” panelists argued that the coming wealth transfer is not merely demographic but a capital-markets inflection point. Stefan Bollinger (Julius Baer) urged reframing the “great wealth transfer” away from a simple parent-to-children narrative: because women live longer and are often younger than spouses, they are likely to control family assets for roughly eight years before the next handoff, making education and early family-governance planning essential.
Speakers emphasized that ownership must translate into decision power. Temi Marcella warned against “fixing women” and instead called for “fixing the systems,” citing persistent concentration of allocation authority in investment committees, boards, and private markets where “less than 2%” of VC funding reaches female founders. Lutfey Siddiqi highlighted how gender-lens capital can produce economy-wide spillovers, from microcredit to labor reforms and digitalizing permits that saved “1.2 million physical visits,” benefiting women disproportionately.
Mounir Nakhla described how mobile-first finance reduces intimidation and expands options at the “bottom of the pyramid,” while Stacey Vanek Smith cautioned that new frontiers—crypto, Silicon Valley—remain male-dominated and that AI will create both “enormous opportunities” and job displacement. The panel’s throughline: diversify decision-making, modernize infrastructure, and invest in education to unlock innovation and resilience.
Go team.
Hi everybody. I'm Diane Brady, executive editorial director at fortune, and I'm looking forward to a great conversation today about women at the finance frontier. We have five experts with us. I'm going to go just around. We have Stacey Vanek Smith, senior story editor of Bloomberg Radio and Bloomberg Media, and also, of course, noted author, which we will talk about in a minute. Muneer Nakhla, who is founder and CEO of M-A. Harlan, welcome. Nice to see you. Lufti Siddiqi, special envoy of the head of the Interim Government of Bangladesh. Welcome. Tammy Marcella, founding partner, Al Saint Capital, and Stephane Bollinger, CEO of Julius Baer. Welcome, everybody. Julius, I mean, Stephane, let's start with you a second and talk a little bit. We're we've been talking what this the genesis of this conversation is really about, this increase in wealth with the wealth transfer that women are going to have by 2030, I believe 40% of the world's investable wealth. How are you thinking about it? And can you give us some sense of perhaps what's underappreciated as we look at this demographic trend?
Absolutely. Look, I think it's always important to contextualize things. And I think there's some numbers out there ranging from 80 to 120 trillion in terms of how much wealth is transferred from, say, the baby boomers to the millennials, predominantly. And a lot of emphasis is put on the next generation. But also, I think people have a hard time understanding what that number really means. And just to contextualize things, Switzerland has 1 trillion GDP, so it's 100 times Switzerland, getting, changing hands. France has three so 30 times US has 30, so three times. So think about three times the US economy just handing, changing hands. So this is, a very, very big event, not just for people in the industry, but for the world at, I think the second point that is really important is everyone talks about the next generation, but we should focus on what's next. And as you know, and I give you some stats. In the OECD, women tend to live five and a half years longer than men, right? Women also are two and a half years younger than their spouse. So purely statistically speaking, the woman will have control over the assets for eight years before it goes to the next generation. So everyone talks about the next, the great wealth transfer and things.
Straight from dad to the kids.
Correct. Yeah. And it's 5050. Well, of course it's not. So the two things is that, it's not 50 over 50, but there's more wealth coming to women than to men. And the second point is that the woman is then deciding how to hand over the money to the next generation.
And we'll talk more about that, because obviously not everybody has been prepared for this. And that's a lot of the research that's been done. I actually want to go next to Lotfi to you, because you've done a lot of work with WIF on this, obviously coming representing Bangladesh. Give us some sense of how this is playing out, you know, in your country and some of the research that really is spurring this discussion.
Well, thank you very much. There is a there are multiple dimensions to this, and multiple lenses that can be applied. There's a whole lot of behavioral science literature that talks about biases and how you include, constituents into, into the markets. Today, I want to focus really on the recipients of capital. So you spoke about the capital pool and investors, and anything. So why would we want to gender Lens to begin with? It's a great proxy for including dimensions that are underserved. So anything that widens the set of considerations when it comes to asset allocation decisions, whether it's Bangladesh as a country or women, as a set of entrepreneurs, I'm all for it. And we have evidence now in Bangladesh, we have the Nobel Prize winning institution, microcredit institution, Grameen Bank. My boss, Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, his microcredit, bank ended up becoming a predominantly women centric organization. He they research have shown that they're better stewards of the money on behalf of, of the family. So it is not only capitalized enterprise at the individual level, it has brought about development at a systemic level. There's evidence that shows even if you're not a borrower of an institution like Grameen Bank, but your neighbors with one and you're sending your kids to school, than you would do the same. The spillover effects, the demonstration effects are also quite widespread. There's also literature that shows that the pushback against classic patriarchy has also been, enabled by things like microcredit. So capital deployment, intentional capital deployment, with women as the target recipient has wide ranging consequences. We saw this also in the readymade garments industry. But I'll hold off now and we can talk more later.
Well, and I'm glad you mentioned recipients because obviously it's we're talking about ecosystem here. I want to turn to you next. And your book was, Machiavelli at scale. So I want to ask what you've gleaned from your reporting and also from your research on this book, in terms of when we're talking about women as investors, what are we underappreciated, and what are you seeing out there in the business landscape?
Well, I think one of the main things I noticed in my own life, but also in my research, is a lot of financial education and even news, financial news, business news is very oriented towards men. It was very much a man's world, very much not the not the territory that women were supposed to venture into. I do think that has changed enormously, but I think there are still a lot of barriers to overcome. I think we're seeing that now in the US, we're seeing women start to drop out of the workforce after gaining and gaining and gaining, especially mothers of very young children because of the cost of childcare. So I am very excited to hear that 40% of capital is going to be transferred to the hands of women. That is enormously exciting. Because I think that has been one of the biggest barriers to women in the economy. In the US, women start about 40% of the businesses, but get about 2% of the capital, which means they can't scale those businesses, and those businesses can't necessarily compete on a.
It sounds like you're skeptical of the numbers. Are you are you surprised and skeptical that 40% figure?
I wouldn't say skeptical. I would say delighted and surprised at that number. I mean, that is a revolutionary number. I think that is absolutely amazing.
In the context of everything that you've just talked about and yet. So, Tammy, let me go to you next in terms of both your own story as well. You talk a lot about making a positive impact and talk about that in the investing context. But I'd love a little bit of background as well.
Yes. And I, I'd love to read your book. One of the first books, when I was a derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs, I was given was Princess Machiavelli for women. And so the psychology of capital is important, especially as you look at women in capital allocation roles and women, you know, at that decision making level. And, you know, I think in terms of framing of the context, I think one of the important things that I think about, it's it's beyond a social movement. It's it's really a capital markets inflection point. Right. Because essentially, you know, even if you assume that, women don't invest differently, inherently differently from men, just it's well documented. And data proves out that having diversity at the decision making level improves everything around sort of risk mitigation, downside protection, but also without trading long term performance. And so I think it's very positive, but there is the inherent challenge and the inherent disconnect that ownership doesn't necessarily translate into allocation. And so as ownership is transferring, you still have highly concentrated, allocation pools of capital, both in terms of at the investment level, at the GP level, but also at the board and investment committees level. And so the question is, how do we fix how, how do we approach system level change and how do we fix the systemic, infrastructure and governance systems that entrench historic, historic heuristics? I sit on the board of one of the largest pools of gender aligned capital investing, and we've been very focused on how do you mobilize capital into public and private markets with a gender aligned philosophy and framework, and how do you use that to then finance philanthropic initiatives? And, you know, through that portfolio, we have the data to prove that sort of investing with a gender aligned framework, actually delivers returns that outperforms benchmarks, but also builds resilient portfolios. And so I'm very excited about the trends, but also about how we translate, you know, some of the work that we're doing and the data we're seeing into making the case for really disrupting, you know, the governance piece and the allocation piece.
I love that. And let me go to you in terms of where you sit in this ecosystem. We're talking when we talk about wealth, we often think about the top of the pyramid. I know you think a lot about the bottom as well in digital inclusion. So give us a sense of of what you're seeing and what your priorities are. As we see this shift.
We've been focused at the bottom of the pyramid, maybe for the past 10 or 15 years, mostly on financial inclusion, whether it's access to finance to grow businesses, savings, investments and creating a whole ecosystem. We operate in four countries Egypt, Pakistan, UAE and Turkey. We've disbursed about $15 billion since we started working. And if we take wealth and women and we think of the bottom of the pyramid, what happens in the informal sector, which is multiples of the formal sector? If a man makes a bit of money, how does he save it? Typically he buys gold. And where does the gold go? It goes as jewelry to his wife. And then if he has a crunch, he goes to his wife and tell her, can I have your bracelet? Can I have your necklace? Because I need to sell it. I'm squeezed. And then there is tension because she thinks it's her jewelry. She gets the wealth. So I'm just showing a slightly different perspective that happens and operates at the bottom of the pyramid. Another perspective is cattle. So a lot of wealth is maintained in cattle. Wherever they make money, they grow their cattle base. Whenever they make money. And when there's a squeeze, they sell what we have very, very. So 60% or 65% of our customer base, active customer base and historical customer base. So we served about 8 million people actively. We have 2.5 million customers now are women. So we focus more on women and to confirm they they pay better, they are more conservative and they're more disciplined, less risk takers. That's what I'm seeing at the bottom of the pyramid. And what we're creating more and more now is a digital ecosystem where they can invest in digital money market funds. They can invest in the stock market. They can invest in gold funds, maybe introduce a silver fund now. And that's a request that came to us from the from the bottom of the pyramid. They said, okay, silver is going up. And it's why why don't you have a silver fund which shows you that they are much more savvy than one would think they are.
Are you seeing that shift in decision making? Because the the genesis of the conversation, you were talking about a very, almost traditional set where the wife gets the gold and then she gives it back when the family has that need. You're now seeing a shift to women doing the decision making, which is really, I think, sort of the heart and soul of, of what we're seeing by 2030. Is that shifting as well, or is it change from the markets since you're in four different markets? I'm sure it's very different from one to the other.
As long as she's controlling the cattle and as long as taking care of the cattle, and as long as her husband saves in gold and jewelry for her, she controls the money.
I love that. And what I love about this conversation is that we're we're seeing wealth across the multiplicity of how people accrue wealth worldwide. I want to go back to you for a second and, you know, talk a little bit about the financial systems and structures. Since we're looking at this through a gender lens, what has been your experience with women and even talk about the cohort you're talking about that have that eight years plus of suddenly controlling capital that they maybe didn't control before? How does that shift and how are you adapting to that new market?
Yeah, first, I would say the stereotypes are always a little bit dangerous. Yes. I mean, I can give you an example of, a man that, is running a healthcare startup. The spouse works in finance and she's the risk taker. Right. And so the this is not always equal. I think the better way to think about, clients and they're all different, different needs is, is their background education, what are the cultural stereotypes and norms, that, in a specific geography. And then, of course, you start to see really big differences. And when you specifically look about, this wealth transfer from typically a man to the spouse, often, they're getting thrown into the deep water. And, I think this, the market participant, they all have a collective responsibility to educate women, get them ready. And, this is a multi-year, often multi-decade process. So if you have never taken an investment decision and all of a sudden you're supposed to do that, it's really hard. And, therefore, or we have never thought about family governance is really difficult. So what is really important is that this conversation starts very early. And then, because 40% of the assets in the hand of women is great, but they also need to have the ability to decide. And I think that's a critical, thing that we as market participants need to get. Right.
Well, and you think you're raising a good point around, you know, we don't want to overdo the gender lens. I do think it's interesting to think, does it matter? And I'm actually going to look to you next on this. Does it matter who's doing the not just who's doing the investing, who's doing the advising? The whole kind of ecosystem around women as investors, if you have a traditional, you know, man essentially telling you how to invest your assets, talk a little bit about how you see that. Since I think you think about the ecosystem.
Yeah. And short answer is I think it does. And I think it's important to have that diversity. You know, when we think about and I think you referenced the stat that sort of less than 2% of venture capital dollars goes to female founded companies. You know, and I speak about private markets because that's the world that I play.
Yeah.
And private markets are extremely important because they determine which teams get funded, which technologies scale, essentially which problems we solve. And and so when you have sort of, you know, a narrow set of decision makers with sort of operating in echo chambers, you can see how that sort of entrenches historical biases, but also limits the, the ability to uncover new investable frontiers. And markets like emerging markets are at risk from that. Emerging business models, emerging sectors. And so I think it does it does matter. You know, I look at some of our portfolio companies within our early stage funds. We are deliberate about trying to create cohorts where we we invest in female founded companies that are building products and services that address that market. And, you know, we have one of our founders that's just received FDA approval for, an at home cancer screening pap smear kit. This is only something that, you know, a woman having had the lived experience of having those horrendous invasive checks every two years in a doctor's clinic would tell you, and, you know, it's important that she was able to to speak to our investment committee. And there were people that fundamentally understood the problem and the addressable market. And, and so I'm not sort of of the mind that it has to be only women investing in women or. But I certainly think that, that diversity of thought around the decision making, capital allocation, risk underwriting table, it's critical.
And just the human instinct, I think, to recognize excellence in a form that reminds us of ourselves. Right. You can't see it gets to a point I know you're going to. And I was thinking about even, pricing risk and what we learned from the experience of Grameen Bank. But you go ahead. Just what were you going.
To say? I was saying similar to what you said. I also get squeamish, particularly as a man, to ascribe attributes to women. Women are.
More the magical this or that.
Yes. So I. disavow that. I don't want to go there, but I do value I do believe representation matters and diversity matter. If you've got more diversity around the table, then you do better scouring for risks and scouting for opportunities. So that's the instrumental reason behind doing this. But the the western capitals, the main pools of capital around the world are very monocultural. There's a certain way, certain language, certain style that a dealing room operates. And so to the extent that we can make it more multicultural, the allocation styles, I think has to be a good thing. I want to talk about specifically, again in Bangladesh, how the gender lens has helped, making things better more widely. We just drafted a sweeping landmark new labor law set of labor reforms in the country that were overdue after the I don't know if you guys know, the Rana Plaza tragedy, 2013, so long overdue that needed to be done. And when you look at the, asymmetry in labor relations that needed to be redressed, the victims of that were mainly women that work in the readymade garments industry, which is a hugely successful industry for the country. The allocation of capital in that, whether it's the likes of H&M, Marks and Spencers, the people who make Zara, Inditex, some of these are owned by family who have philanthropic foundations. They have helped raise standards, environmental standards, conditions for maternity and things like that. So that allocation of capital in a very intentional way has helped and catalyzed more change. But it doesn't have to. Philanthropy. I wish mainstream investment could also benefit from an approach of that kind. And if I could just also say last, as a government, we as we are now enacting reforms. So we have elections coming up next month, and we had undertaken to engage in a set of institutional reforms between now and then. When we try and think about how do we make the conditions better for doing business, ease of doing business, ease of deregulation where there is excessive, rules and processes, corruption at a retail level, how many times do you have to physically go to an office to get a permit? Why do you have to renew it every year when it can be done five years in a row? Once you put the gender lens, it makes it easier to come up with processes that would just enhance efficiency and convenience for everyone, not just women. Small and medium sized enterprises. A lot of them are women. I had a blind spot, the investment committee that I run, that I chair in the government. I'd forgotten to invite them for the first couple of meetings. And when I did, I realized that, my God, they faced these issues around our currency controls. If we had PayPal in the country or if we had Facebook could, you know, open up this new functionality, we could use that local language, AI. It would really help. And so when you use that lens, you end up helping everyone.
Well, and I think one of the things Microfinancing taught us is the whole idea of the assumptions around even the payback rates, and that women did pay those rates back as high or higher than people getting more money. I want to turn to you for a second around this whole realm of the assumptions that are made, you know, including potentially coverage and storytelling, but just the assumptions that are made around women as investors, whether it's pricing risk, whether it's investing in them as businesses. Give me some sense as to what are you seeing a shift because you're out there in the marketplace talking to all these people. You know, we're talking about women. How much does the sort of old stereotypes stand?
That's a really interesting question. I mean, I feel like I see both sides of it. On the one hand, I do see enormous progress, and I do see more women starting businesses and more women at least asking questions about the economy, learning about the economy, educating themselves about the economy. However, also a lot of the new frontiers of investment and money are also very male. If you look at crypto, if you look at the betting markets, if you look at Silicon Valley and how it's structured and who's running those companies, it's still very male. So I guess I am both very optimistic and very I think it's important to be realistic, especially at the moment that we're in now. In the US, there's a lot of backlash against inclusion and diversity and all of these things. And so companies are maybe no longer doing it for the optics. And of course, optics is not the reason one should do it, but it can really help. Right. So once the push for optics goes away, I'm afraid it's too easy to regress. And I think it's such a fascinating point that not only is it important to get the money, but it's important to know what to do with it to have that education. Investing is complicated, especially in the markets now. And so I think that education is really key.
And I think also just some of the ways in which women are perceived to be risk averse, I happen to think are true for a multiplicity of reasons. But let me go to you for a second in terms of what you were talking about earlier. I do think private capital obviously plays a critical role in financing innovation. We were talking earlier about, VCs, etc.. How how are you thinking about with with your company of, how you are actually helping innovation in these four markets? And do you see any trends with women that are playing out differently than you do with men?
Sure. So education is an important point. Fundraising is another point. So we have been fundraising for years. We've worked with VCs, we've worked with PS, and maybe most of the people we have dealt with are men. So I confirm that the individuals are men. I have seen them invest in a lot of companies where they are run by women. So just to balance my own experience, whether in the VC world or private equity world with regards to innovation, it comes hand in hand with education and with options. So we our motto and thesis is to democratize access to finance and democratize investments. And how do we do that? There's no easier way than giving it on the mobile phone. If I take another example, I wear a hoop and I see more and more people wearing.
How's your score?
Very good, very good.
Relaxed.
Well slept.
Should ask me what my age is. When I'm asked this question, I say my age. I don't say my age.
What's your. age then? 40.60 well. Okay. Done.
He might live as long as a woman.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. I think this is a compliment.
So, So I have to admit, the hoop really helped me be mindful about my health, about educate me about my and diagnostics, analysis, recovery, sleep, etc. the same way we are thinking about finance. So we are giving now. That's the direction we're working towards is hyper personalization. So we're using the data to be able to hyper personalize the service to our customer. Because we work with millions of customers and very small transactions, we need to give them a lot of options and then guide them towards what they prefer to do. If you want high risk, that's what you do. And then there's education in the.
Are you are you seeing since we're we are looking at this through a gender lens. Do you see differences in in how women take that money, invest that money, how the attitudes towards money mean it is education? But I do think part of what we're talking about here is the opportunity. And are we unleashing the opportunity for women to create more wealth, first of all, but also to be serving them in perhaps different ways?
So I think because it's more accessible, it becomes more available than the woman has the opportunity. Before giving the opportunity on a mobile phone. It was more complex for her to walk into a branch where there's a security guy and a guy wearing a tie like myself. Today, it's intimidating, but if she needs to make a decision on her sofa with a mobile phone in hand, it's much easier. Decision.
That does seem a little dangerous too, though, because I feel like a lot of the, there's a lot of risk associated with like some of the trades that you can make on your mobile phone, too. So I do feel like there's there's a bad side or potentially risky side of that too.
Always.
Yeah.
Well, there are always.
Two sides to a coin. There's the pro and there's the con. If we start by giving her, empowering her to make the decision and then educating her to make the right decision and hoping that she makes the right decision. How many men have made the wrong decisions.
With you? I think Julia's prediction markets. And look, I mean, so it's I don't think it's gender specific. I just think it's.
No, but you.
You raise it agnostic.
I mean, M-Pesa in Kenya, for example, gave women the ability to actually retain and collect wealth. It gave them the bank account so that the money wasn't immediately being handed over. We are talking about opportunity here. And how are you positioning the firm in a way you're looking at this coming. Are you hiring differently? Do you feel like you have to perhaps go to market differently in some ways?
Well, I start with something very obvious. And you said it already that, we should look like our clients. And so, of course, diversity in the workforce is super important in investing is super important. In investment, we always talk about building an efficient frontier, and we want to be at the optimal point. And if you think about your people, you should do the same thing. You should have an optimal point on the efficient front.
That sufficient or do you find the advisory models have to change, too?
I mean, maybe the next step, of course, is that, we have to be diverse, as diverse as our clients. And, you know, if you look at the regions where you see the biggest acceleration of this transfer of wealth to women, in Asia, our leadership teams are roughly 5050. Our advisors are 5050. So it represents, what, hopefully the future will be in terms of, the wealth owners, but yes, of course, we have to make changes. And I think the most important that everyone agrees on here is, is education. We really need to invest. And, the approach that women.
Of whom is part of your educating the women, you're also educating the traditional and, you know, it does get to. So it's almost like Timmy, give advice here in terms of, you mentioned the at home pap smear, which I think I would immediately resonate with me. Sounds like a great idea. I do think there's a recognition that perhaps women do look at the world differently when they're investing their assets. What are you seeing? Because that's very much the genesis of what you're trying to do right now.
You know, there is and, you know, I speak personally, anecdotally, I look at the way I, assess investment opportunities versus some of my male partners who I adore. But and we've had some, some, some investments in the portfolio that I thought, well, why does the world need another ugly drinks? You know, whereas people are revolutionizing.
Game.
You know, so so there is and, you know, I hate to generalize, but there is something to be said in terms of the difference is that the attributes that we have, along gender lines and then how that translates into, philosophy of investing and sort of taking risk. I do think the education point is extremely important. So, you know, as an allocator of capital and as a GP, I have women reaching out to me, women who have come into money, women who have had successful exits, women who have inherited capital and are saying, I don't know what to do with it, you know, can we invest alongside you? Can you share pipeline with us? Can we create angel groups? And so I think there are structures that you can create to start to get women started. We specifically were advocating to get more women as LPs in our funds, because we wanted to sort of catalyze and mobilize capital around that. And so I think large institutional institutions have a role to play, obviously, but I think it's very important at the sort of private venture level, because those, systems, structures, mindsets get embedded at that level and then sort of graduate with the companies as they progress through the successive rounds of funding and eventually IPO. Yeah. And so we, you know, I take that role as a steward of capital at early stage, very important because it's about building the right muscle in.
Finding the right partners.
Getting the right partners.
To scale.
Absolutely. Building the right governance structures with the founders that is representative. So it's not a foreign concept when you're looking at a listing and suddenly, you know, you have an all male board, you'll be the founder themselves would be advocating for that diversity at their boards.
I want to you mentioned policy earlier, and I think one of the things I think about when we talk about wealth in the aggregate, it can look impressive. But certainly in the US and elsewhere, we've seen this k-shaped economy, as people call it, where, you know, there may be wealth being created, but it's being created at the top and not necessarily among the the vast majority of people. And you mentioned, for example, the labor laws being put into place. What is the role of the policy makers, as we see in the aggregate, this wealth going to women to help kind of maximize the opportunity? I'm not just talking about democratization, but from where you sit.
Sure. So I think, you know, virtually every government in the world, needs to appreciate that ultimately, it's the economy that they need to take care of. And, virtually everyone is facing economic challenges. So you need as much participation in the economy as possible to the extent that you have potentially productive sections of society excluded from the economy. You're shooting yourself in the foot because they could be coming in and and giving you that uplift in the economy that's required. So the role of policy, when I think of, for example, the labor reforms. So we Bangladesh is now the only, I believe, only South Asia country that has signed up to all the fundamental conventions of the ILO. And the latest one that we signed, also involves harassment in the workplace. And we realized we also needed to have a law concomitant with that, because we do not have a definition of harassment, a legal definition of harassment. So once you go down that pathway, you realize there's a whole lot that, that we hadn't done. You take another reform, you know, we had, if you want to export or import in Bangladesh, you need a range of licenses, potentially up to 150 different licenses, 19 different ministries. And the way to do that is you go to each of the ministries and physically, and you probably pay cash. God knows you know how you're treated or you know whether you need to pay extra, etc., etc. it's not an easy process. So we wanted to bring that into an online single national window. The technology has been there for 7 or 8 years. The money has been there, but the political will wasn't there. So the various ministries did not want to attach themselves to it. We've done it now, and over the last 2 or 3 months, the world Bank estimates that it has saved 1.2 million physical visits to these government offices in just 2 or 3 months. And you can imagine the benefit of that has to disproportionately accrue to women. So you're removing deterrents that women face in participating in the formal economy. And that is probably an example of that.
Well, it makes me want to go to you next. If you could wave a wand and you think about some of the changes that could take place, that would also sort of unleash the energy, the capital, etc. for women in the countries in which you operate, are there priorities that you would have to sort of align the markets?
There's one priority, but it will, it's good for men and women.
And we.
Welcome both.
Yes.
And it's the digital identity to have one digital identity that is approved by all Ministry of Interior passports, approved by courts. So you can go to court and have a good court system that approves digital, that that's a game changer. I've seen it in the GCC and it just makes growth and distribution really fast.
Are there particular advantages for women in that accessibility?
Because women are by in our parts of the world, spend more of their time at home and less in public offices and less in official, so they will have digital access for more services at home because their digital identity will be confirmed.
So go ahead.
Just add to that. Certainly in our experience, a disproportionate number of women are in the informal economy. Sure. Having that single ID brings them into the formal economy in one go. That's your tax ID, that is your bank account. It's connected to that. Your credit scoring. Can you get a loan? Have you taken loans elsewhere or not? Can you get a credit card payments? All of that can be, completely changed if you're in the formal economy, facilitated by something like what you just.
Said and without needing to leave the home.
Yes. Right.
This is the main part.
So, I know that our time is winding down, but, Stacy, before I go to some final comments, I'm curious about, you know, one of the things with Machiavelli at scale, it sort of implied to me that there's a certain, onus upon women, obviously, to educate themselves. But I think about the trends in the economy, and one that we've not touched on yet is AI. You mentioned crypto. Is that having an impact, positive or negative, do you think? Certainly in the accrual of wealth, perhaps. But how does that change the scenario we're talking about. Because that impacts jobs. It impacts wealth. It impacts, frankly, the way we all operate.
That is a very interesting point. I will answer that with something that I learned when I was I talked to economists a lot of the time. I spent a lot of time talking to economists. Lucky you. I know I love it, but it's definitely not for everybody. So one of the things that I've heard from economists for a long time was that the the plans coming out of economics were very oriented towards very white, very male, because the, the people who are able to get the money for research assistants, who would aggregate the data, who would synthesize the data and analyze the data, who are then able to publish papers and the five very relevant journals, they were all looking at the same problems. It comes down to what problems they're looking at, what problems they're solving, what they are observing through their lens. Now, with AI, a lot of economists are getting this new voice because they're able to use AI to aggregate data, synthesize data. And so all of a sudden they have all of this firepower they did not have before. At the same time, that is a lot of research assistants who suddenly don't have jobs. So I think, I mean, this is also for men and women in the economy. I think we're all kind of facing up against this great unknown that is AI that will provide both enormous opportunities because it will digitize us. It will kind of we're all equal in a certain sense in front of this monolith that's coming at us. But I think there are also risks with that as well, especially as the economy is kind of shuffling. There are fewer opportunities that can that can be harder for for women and other groups.
I want to give each of you a chance to give some final thoughts, and I'm going to start with you, give us a sense, you know, what's on your radar that you would put on ours when we think about, this vast pot of wealth that women are going to be controlling, investing, give us your sort of takeaways.
Yeah. If I would leave you with two things. The first is this great wealth transfer is extremely large and important. And women play the crucial role here. And the second related point is around family governance. Because, family owned businesses are the backbone of many economies. Like if you look at GCC and Southeast Asia and other places, and getting this right, that you transfer not just the value, the wealth, but also you keep people employed is, is absolutely critical. So, everyone should, spend time and think about, how to do this the right way.
Great. Tammy.
You know, I would leave with I love to shift the emphasis away from fixing women to fixing the systems.
Yes. Definitely don't have to fix.
Yes. Women are, you know, achieving education rates in some places that surpass surpass males. And so, you know, it's not necessarily just about the education, but it's about the empowerment. And the empowerment is usually linked to the capital. And so, you know, for me, the focus is on, diversifying, the allocation of capital and embedding, you know, these decisions and these frameworks in governance and in reporting and in incentive systems in a way that we mainstream the discussion and move it beyond the fringes and the sidelines and the, you know, acronyms of Dei, but actually recognizing that it is about global competitiveness, it's about global resilience of our markets. And, you know, there is an investment case for investing behind women.
And unleashing new opportunities. I agree. Absolutely. I'm going to go to you next. I know I'm going in a V here, but any final thoughts for us?
One thing that is a little bit to the side of what we've been talking about, but I think is so important, is the issue of childcare, because that is such a huge issue for women and their careers. And in fact, I spoke with the economist Claudia Goldin, who won a Nobel Prize and has done a lot of work around women and families, has said that if she could change one thing in the world that would help women in in work and careers and money management, it would be for the government to subsidize childcare for there to be some kind of affordable childcare. So it's a little bit to the side of this, but I think it is actually quite.
I don't think it is. And obviously you look at decisions to have children, it's very much contingent on housing, income, your ability to think you're going to hope that the future is better. Some thoughts from you.
So I think the future is technology. And with having and inclusiveness, democratizing finance, access to finance. And there is no better way than hyper personalization through an app. So through education, through giving them multiple options from their pocket. And I think that's where the future is going. And I think on multiple scales. So we're seeing it at the bottom of the pyramid. But I think it will trickle up very quickly.
I agree with that. But I also echo the point you made about the consequences or implications of AI for women's, employment, because in the ready made garments industry, we've already seen over the last few years that with increased automation, both the number and proportion of women working in that sector has been going down. So we need to take a look at that. My, I guess the point I'd like to make is the elephant in the room, which is, as you talk about this in Western capitals, it's a very important topic. Don't let it be hijacked by culture wars. This is not about, you know, tokenism, virtue signaling, all of that stuff. The acronyms of Dei, the it impacts real lives. And the more we can be data based, evidence based, rigorous, can have open debates without fear of being censored, that sort of stuff, the better. So that will be my appeal to.
You, I love that. Why wouldn't you want access to the greatest pool of leaders, the greatest pool of investors? Why limit yourself through that sort of bias? So please join me in thanking our panelists and thank you for joining us today. Conversation to be continued. And trends certainly seem to be moving in a direction that I find very exciting as a journalist.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you.