In Mexico, figures from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) show women hold 52.8% of jobs across the banking system, yet men fill approximately two of every three senior positions at the eight institutions that report leadership data. Banorte, one of the country’s largest domestically owned banks, reported no women in its top management cohort. In Brazil, a study covering 1,744 regulated financial institutions found women occupying just 20% of leadership roles, and absent entirely from the leadership of 30% of those institutions.

The two datasets measure different populations and use different methodologies, so a direct numerical comparison is difficult. The directional finding, however, is consistent: the further up the hierarchy, the fewer women appear.

The deficit is routinely framed as an equity issue, and it is. But for banks and fintechs targeting Latin America’s consumer and small-business markets, it is also a product and risk question. Senior leadership teams decide credit scoring models, product eligibility criteria, collateral requirements and the channels through which financial services are distributed. In markets where roughly half of potential customers are women, and where financial inclusion for women remains structurally lower than for men, a homogeneous decision-making layer is likely to compound existing exclusion rather than reduce it.

” Her company has built credit products specifically around the income and cash-flow patterns common among women-led micro-businesses in Mexico, a segment poorly served by traditional scoring models calibrated on formal employment and asset ownership.

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