Macquarie bets impact investing can fill an Asian financial access gap for the ‘missing middle’

Many women business owners around the world can’t get access to the financing they need. The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative, a World Bank–housed partnership, estimated that 400 million female entrepreneurs struggle to get loans, and serving them could lead to as much as $6 trillion in added value to the global economy. 

Yet across the Asia-Pacific region, banks hesitate to lend to women entrepreneurs. That’s partly owing to stereotypes, but it’s also because lending criteria weren’t designed to capture how female-led small and medium-size enterprises operate. As Diana Tjoeng, head of Asia for Sydney-based NGO Good Return, points out, female business owners may lack official identity documents and formal credit histories, even if they have run their businesses for decades.

“The specific barrier is capital,” says Lisa George, global head of the Macquarie Group Foundation. “Without access to capital, it’s very hard to get social mobility and educational mobility in life.”

Earlier this year, the Macquarie Group Foundation committed 1 million Australian dollars ($696,000) to an impact investment fund managed by Good Return, which works to expand access to finance for women-led businesses across the Asia-Pacific region. The two groups have worked together sinc...