Financial Inclusion

Tamkeen is a holistic economic empowerment project that aims at promoting women and youth employability through skill enhancement trainings and financial education for self-employment. The project is complemented with a tailor-made financial product also named “Tamkeen”. In 2018, the first phase of the training was completed in Assiut for 488 selected recipients through civil associations and grass root NGOs. Eligible beneficiaries received microloans for livestock and other business activities at favorable conditions that sets Tamkeen apart from traditional microfinance products.

Partners: Sawiris Foundation for Social Development and International Labor Organization 

Financially aware children will turn out to be financially literate citizens. Out of that belief, ALEXBANK developed “Hady Bady” – the Arabic analogous for the children’s rhyme “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe”- to teach children how to make well thought out decisions when it comes to spending on things they want, saving to attain things they wish for and donating money to help those in less fortunate financial circumstances. The game was designed by a young graphic designer who was still a university student at the time. "Hady Bady" is ALEXBANK’s first financial literacy game tailored for Egyptian children with the purpose of enshrining principles of prioritizing financial needs in balance with supporting others with less fortunate financial circumstances.

In 2018, ALEXBANK implemented the first national rollout of the Hady Bady Game and reached a total of 7,143 students in seven selected governorates (Suhag, Asyut, Minya, Fayoum, Cairo, Giza, and Beni Suef ).

Following the success of the first national roll out, ALEXBANK collaborated with the Ministry of Education to launch a second national roll out of Hady Bady in October 2019. Coinciding with World Savings Day, the game was introduced to more than 10,000 students in 20 schools across the following five governorates in the Delta area: Alexandria, Port Said, Tanta, Suez and Ismailia.

In alignment with the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE)’s celebrations of Financial Inclusion events during April, following in the footsteps of Intesa Sanpaolo’s (ISP) Museum of Savings, and in upkeeping of social distancing measures for the health and safety of all, we set out and concluded the first virtual rollout of our financial literacy boardgame, “Hady Bady,” reaching about 200 children aged between 5 and 16 years old and more than 20 volunteers and caretakers affiliated with the two Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) facilitating the educational gaming sessions that took place on Zoom across 10 orphanages.

We kicked off the second phase of the virtual rollout in June 2021, led by ALEXBANK’s Sustainable Finance for Development Unit, reaching over 200 kids aged between 5 to 18 years old for children with disabilities (Autism, ADHD, Down Syndrome), their parents/caretakers, and the children’s siblings in partnership with SETI Center – Caritas Egypt in tandem with our financial inclusion strategy for People with Disabilities (PwDs).

After two successful virtual rollouts, ALEXBANK rolled out its financial literacy boardgame “Hady Bady” for the third time during the CBE’s World Savings Day celebration week.

ALEXBANK held its second training sessions for six facilitators and caretakers at Caritas –SETI Center for children with disabilities in order to ensure the sustainability of the game following the virtual rollout session.

For this phase of the virtual rollout, ALEXBANK facilitated six sessions across 3 governorates (Cairo, Alexandria and Suhag) reaching around 100 children with disabilities and youth with disabilities within SETI Center’s vocational training program.

After two years of success rollouts in schools reaching 20,000 children across Egypt, the Hady Bady game, which teaches children how to spend, save and donate, has now been availed through a digital platform that can simultaneously entertain and educate children aged 6 to 10 years old.

The Hady Bady App is the first digital game of its kind powered and initiated by an Egyptian Bank and developed by homegrown talent and is in alignment with our parent company Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP), ISP’s Saving Museum, the Central Bank of Egypt, and ALEXBANK’s CSR & Sustainable Development Strategy (2019-2021) for Financial Inclusion and Literacy.

The Hady Bady App was launched on the 31^st of October 2021 in celebration of World Savings Day under the auspices of the CBE.

ALEXBANK implemented on-ground activations of the Hady Bady App since the launch in 5 governorates, reaching more than 2800 children at public schools and one NGO, which also happened to be the kick-off of our one-year on-ground National Rollout, beginning on World Savings Day 2021 leading up to World Savings Day 2022.

The total number of downloads for the app reached 1,271 downloads until January 2022.

ALEXBANK’s strategic partnership with the National Council of Women is taking shape through a national program targeting the financial inclusion of marginalized women. ALEXBANK is developing a solution together with Vodafone to digitalize savings groups. The pilot phase will onboard 200 women in Beni Suef and Asyut into savings groups and train them on the new digital solution that offers them access to extra pools of cash to meet basic household needs or to invest in income-generating activities. 

Following the success of the initial pilot phase, ALEXBANK embarked on a second phase of the National Digital Savings Groups pilot (that is led by the Central Bank of Egypt and the National Council of Women) by targeting the onboarding of more than 3,000 women into 150 savings groups in Asyut, with the primary objective of enabling the digital financial inclusion of women in marginalized communities. The objective has been achieved by forming women into groups, offering digital and financial literacy sessions, social skills training and economic empowerment opportunities lead by experts from CARE Egypt, and Vodafone e-wallet and Vodafone Cash Services.

To date, 3,104 women received financial education trainings, 1,500 women received numerical literacy sessions, while 1,137 women received social empowerment trainings.

ALEXBANK has also made an additional contribution in form of a micro-insurance package for the women in the digital savings groups, covering a variety of illnesses for the duration of the project.

Recently, ALEXBANK has extended the duration of the project to end in June 2022. This is to give a chance to all the onboarded women to continue a full savings cycle which is 9 to 12 months of saving.

This stage of the project marks the first step towards partial digitalization, aiming to enhance the traditional VSLA model and to serve as a proof of concept for the National DSG Project.

2018 was declared the “Year of Persons with Disabilities”. In that light, ALEXBANK partnered with Helm Consulting in order to ensure the accessibility of ALEXBANK branches to People with Disabilities (PwD), with an overarching goal of creating an inclusive environment for both our employees and customers. Overall, 24 of our branches have been made physically accessible, with plans to further expand to 31 branches by the end of Q1 2022. In addition, front-liners have received the Disability Equality Training (DET) given by Helm Consulting in 2020 and the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI) in 2021 which included a sign language training; in order to further raise awareness and change attitudes towards the greater inclusion of people in mainstream operations, services and activities.

Furthermore, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has shared a new circulation with updated guidelines on the inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) as customers and employees.

As part of Hayah Kareema initiative and under the supervision of Central Bank of Egypt, ALEXBANK has partnered with World Food Program (WFP) to support in providing microfinance loans in the Hayah Kareema targeted villages in Assuit and Qena.

ALEXBANK visited 13 Hayah Kareema Villages in 2021 in Qena and Assiut. Aside from offering WFP Smallholder Farmers loans, ALEXBANK conducted financial literacy and awareness sessions and availed Meeza cards.

Hady Bady boardgame was also activated in some Hayah Kareema villages.

ALEXBANK has activated Hayah Kareema villages during the CBE’s circular Farmer’s Week, World Savings Day celebration, and Persons with Disabilities Financial Inclusion Week in Qena and Assiut. The activation included financial literacy and awareness sessions for men, women and youth. “Hady Bady” was also activated in some Hayah Kareema villages as a financial literacy activity for children.

Finally, ALEXBANK has more visits planned for December 2021 and January 2022 for Hayah Karima villages in Qena and Assiut.