Gender-focused technical assistance (TA) is increasingly recognised as essential to expanding women’s access to finance — yet it remains underutilised across much of the investment landscape. While capital commitments to gender-lens investing continue to grow globally, this progress is uneven across regions. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), for example, the venture capital ecosystem remains highly exclusionary: women-only founding teams receive just ~1–2% of total VC funding, despite broader growth in startup investment. This persistent gap reflects not only capital constraints but deeper structural barriers within investment ecosystems — including bias in investment decision-making, limited networks, and weak institutional capacity to identify and support women-led businesses. As a result, comparatively less attention is paid to the institutional capabilities that determine whether financial institutions can effectively serve women entrepreneurs — reinforcing regional disparities and limiting the impact of capital alone.
This is not simply a question of resources. It is also a question of strategy and design. Without a clearer understanding of what makes gender TA work, and how it can drive institutional change, investors risk overlooking one of the most powerful levers for translating gender ambition into operational reality.
In 2025, Oesterreichische Entwicklungsbank (OeEB), the Development Bank of Austria, partnered with Kore Global to undertake an independent ex-post evaluation of a gender-focused TA initiative delivered with Sanadcom for business finance (Sanadcom), a Jordanian SME lender, in collaboration with Women’s World Banking. The evaluation was commissioned by OeEB to assess the effectiveness of the gender TA on Sanadcom’s performance as well as to generate strategic learning to inform OeEB’s future gender TA and advisory support.
Read the full evaluation report here.
The findings offer practical insight into how gender TA can move financial institutions from gender intention to integration — and why design choices matter as much as delivery.
Moving from gender ambition to institutional practice
Sanadcom operates in Jordan’s “missing middle,” financing micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that are too large for microfinance yet frequently underserved by commercial banks. Women entrepreneurs face additional structural barriers, including limited collateral ownership and persistent perceptions of higher credit risk.
Rather than launching a standalone product for women, the TA initiative focused on strengthening the institution itself. Credit policies were revised, gender considerations embedded into risk assessment and client engagement, staff capacity strengthened through integrated training, IT systems upgraded to support sex-disaggregated reporting, and incentives aligned with expanding outreach to women entrepreneurs. The emphasis was on institutional strengthening to position Sanadcom as a leader in gender finance and better positioned to meet the needs of women-led MSMEs.
Evidence that technical assistance can drive institutional change
The evaluation found that these institutional changes translated into measurable results. Women’s share of Sanadcom’s portfolio increased from 6.4% in 2020 to 9.9% in 2022, before stabilising at approximately 8.6% in 2025 amid broader economic volatility— marking meaningful progress in reaching a historically underserved segment despite contextual challenges.
Portfolio performance told an even stronger story. Portfolio at Risk (PAR) for women declined from 36.3% in 2020 to just 6% by 2024, ultimately outperforming the male borrower portfolio. This finding challenges persistent assumptions about the risk profile of women-owned enterprises and suggests that gender-responsive lending can strengthen credit outcomes.
Operationally, the TA introduced greater consistency in credit decision-making, streamlined processes, and strengthened Sanadcom’s reputation with investors and ecosystem actors.
The evaluation also documented internal cultural shifts: Sanadcom appointed its first female CEO and achieved near gender parity across its workforce — notable progress in a sector where women remain underrepresented in leadership.
Effective TA, the findings suggest, can reshape how FIs function — not simply what they offer.
Five design choices for meaningful technical assistance delivery
While contexts differ, the evaluation surfaced several features that appear particularly influential in determining whether gender TA leads to lasting institutional change.
- Ground the intervention in institutional reality.
The initiative began with a detailed diagnostic of Sanadcom’s operations, identifying gaps in credit processes, staff capacity, and gender integration. Anchoring the TA in operational priorities — rather than applying a pre-defined TA design — strengthened relevance and fostered internal ownership. - Embed gender into core business functions.
Gender was integrated across Sanadcom’s credit policies, risk frameworks, training, and client engagement instead of being treated as a parallel workstream. Positioning gender responsiveness as part of institutional systems increased the likelihood that practices would endure beyond the project. - Align incentives with strategic objectives.
Introducing higher employee bonuses for acquiring and retaining women clients linked staff performance directly to institutional gender goals. This alignment proved critical in translating policy into everyday behavior. - Invest in systems alongside skills.
Training was reinforced by upgrades to Sanadcom’s IT infrastructure that enabled gender-disaggregated data collection and more systematic reporting. Institutional change rarely results from knowledge alone; it is sustained when policies, processes, and data systems support new ways of operating. - Secure leadership commitment early.
Engagement from Sanadcom’s senior management helped embed gender priorities within strategic decision-making and contributed to broader organizational shifts, including progress toward gender diversity in leadership. Where leadership alignment is strong, TA is far more likely to catalyse durable transformation.
Taken together, these lessons highlight how TA is most effective when treated as a strategic instrument for institutional strengthening rather than a set of discrete support activities.
Strengthening institutions to accelerate impact
As development finance institutions sharpen their focus on additionality and long-term impact, thoughtfully designed TA is becoming increasingly central.
The Sanadcom evaluation underscores how capital alone does not deliver gender outcomes — institutions do. Policies, incentives, systems, and leadership ultimately determine whether financial institutions can serve women entrepreneurs effectively and sustainably.
For Sanadcom, the results have been transformative. As Rana Hamdan, CEO of Sanadcom, explains:
“Our mission at Sanadcom is to bridge the financing gap for underserved MSMEs, particularly women-led businesses. This initiative has strengthened our ability to deliver tailored, inclusive financial solutions that empower women entrepreneurs to grow, create jobs, and contribute meaningfully to Jordan’s economy. In addition, Gender-focused technical assistance has been a turning point for Sanadcom. It enabled us to move beyond ambition and embed gender responsiveness into our core operations — from credit policies to client engagement — strengthening our ability to serve women-led MSMEs in a more sustainable and impactful way.”
For OeEB, the evaluation provides actionable insight into how gender TA can deepen the impact of its investments. For the wider investor community, it reinforces the importance of approaching gender TA not as a nice-to-have offering, but as a strategic lever for institutional change.
At Kore Global, we partner with investors, financial institutions, and foundations to design and deliver technical assistance, research and evaluations that strengthen systems, build institutional capacity, and advance gender and development outcomes.
Learn more about our approach to Technical Assistance and IMM in our two-page overviews