Trust by Design Fintech Challenge

• 79% reduction in the average out-of-pocket claim excess women paid
• Live in production with 10+ payers and 300K+ members (~40% women)
• Payer client base doubled in the past 12 months

Judges cited it as the cohort’s most novel trust-by-design application – fairness engineered into the core decision infrastructure from the start.

• 63% of digital credit disbursements go to women, who also default less than men
• Female disbursement share climbed to 74.7% in 2026, up from 57% in 2025
• Strong client satisfaction, reflected in a high transactional Net Promoter Score

Gender-disaggregated data directly shaped interface design, pricing, and advisory programming.

• 11M+ borrowers scored across 60+ partners, ~$11B underwritten
• 3–5x lift in loan approvals for women versus bureau-only scoring, on the same book
• Early-warning system held collection efficiency high on a climate-exposed cohort, versus a sharp drop-off in unflagged regions

Judges were most excited by the explainability layer running through the product – a clear, walkable breakdown of what drove ki score’s rating, and of the early-warning signals behind ki monitor’s repayment alerts.

• 14M+ interactions per year, ~89% resolved without a human
• Complaints filed by women in Rwanda more than doubled via Proto’s AI agent
• Average complaint-resolution time cut from 35 days to 4 days

Proto pairs resolution with visibility – consumers get tracking and status updates, regulators get gender-disaggregated analytics informing supervisory decisions.

About 740 million women globally remain financially excluded, representing more than half of the world’s unbanked population.

One major barrier to financial inclusion for many excluded groups is a lack of trust. One in five unbanked adults in low- and middle-income countries cite it as a key reason for staying out of the financial system. Digital financial services are helping to close the financial inclusion gap, but they can only achieve sustained adoption if users trust them. Customers must feel confident that products are transparent, fair, and designed with their interests in mind. Yet across many markets, trust remains fragile. Concerns about fraud, opaque pricing, over-indebtedness, data misuse, and aggressive collection practices discourage customers from adopting or continuing to use financial services.

We believe that trust is not only a social good — it is a commercial imperative. Products designed around customer realities often demonstrate stronger repayment behavior, higher retention, and more durable growth. For providers competing in emerging markets, trust-centered design has proven to provide a competitive advantage.

Across markets, fintechs are working to address these issues. Many are improving underwriting, strengthening fraud detection, and building more transparent and responsible products.

Some providers are going further by introducing intentional design choices that reduce harm and improve customer understanding. This includes features such as additional prompts that encourage users to review key terms and interactive tools that help customers recognize and avoid fraud. Others are integrating gender-disaggregated data into product design, underwriting, and serving to better understand where risks to women’s financial security emerge and how outcomes might differ across customer groups.

The Trust by Design Fintech Challenge aims to spotlight and elevate these types of approaches. The goal is not only to recognize strong leaders in the space, but also to demonstrate that trust-centered design is good business.