ACCION International recently announced that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has approved its application to establish ACCION Microfinancas, a new microfinance organization in Amazonas, a state in northern Brazil.
Michael Schlein, President and CEO of ACCION, stated, “We are particularly excited by the prospect of extending financial access in Amazonas, one of the most underserved regions of a country where microfinance, overall, remains nascent.” The northern region of Brazil consists of seven states and is home to an estimated 1.9 million microentrepreneurs, only 8 to 10 percent of whom have received any kind of loan whatsoever. Tomas Miller, senior investment officer at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund, stated that ACCION Microfinancas will employ new approaches that include, “a credit scoring and a cash flow-based credit assessment model; making use of Brazil’s innovative correspondent banking system to partner with banks and extend services through retail stores and other outlets; and deploying payment technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), prepaid bank cards and cell phones.” ACCION Microfinancas plans to expand its offering in several years to include products such as “lines of credit, credit cards, longer-term fixed-asset loans, financial education and, eventually, microinsurance products through alliances with insurance companies.” Also joining ACCION as an equity partner in the new venture is private investor Luiz Felipe D’Avila among others.
About ACCION International:
ACCION International is a private, U.S. based nonprofit organization with the mission of giving people the financial tools necessary for poverty alleviation, such as microenterprise loans, business training and other financial services. ACCION was founded in 1961 and issued its first microloan in 1973 in Brazil. ACCION’s partner microfinance institutions today are providing loans as low as USD 50 to poor men and women entrepreneurs in 23 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the United States. In the last decade, ACCION partners have disbursed more than 28.5 million loans totaling USD 23.4 billion; 97 percent of the loans have been repaid. ACCION website: http://www.accion.org
Bibliography:
ACCION International: https://www.microcapital.org/microfinanceuniverse/tiki-index.php?page=ACCION+International
Additional Resources:
[1] Original article: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/accion-gets-green-light-from-brazils-president-to-launch-new-microfinance-institution-in-amazonas-82599372.html
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