Germany’s Invest in Visions Mikrofinanzfonds, a fund advised by Belgium’s Incofin, recently agreed to loan up to USD 5 million to Beige Capital Savings and Loans, a unit of Ghana’s Beige Group, which offers banking, pension, insurance and investment services. Among Beige Capital’s goals is to “be the [small and medium-sized enterprise] bank of choice across Ghana.”
As part of the process of considering
“How to IPO Successfully and Responsibly: Lessons From Indian Financial Inclusion Institutions”; by Anna Kanze; published by the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) at Accion; Fall 2016; 25 pages; available at: http://www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/storage/documents/How_to_IPO_Final.pdf
This report draws upon two recent initial public offerings (IPOs) in the financial inclusion industry – those of Equitas and Ujjivan, both microfinance lenders in India – to make the case that institutions can use IPOs to strengthen their capital base while remaining committed to their social missions.
At
the 2016 Mekong Financial Inclusion Forum, MFIs and funders led this session’s discussion of collaboration. Kelly Hattel, Financial Sector Specialist for the Asian Development Bank, underscored “the importance of having national strategies for financial inclusion and having them be evidence-based. These are important…both as a donor individually and for
The European Fund for Southeast Europe, a microfinance investment vehicle that was launched by Germany’s KfW Development Bank, announced today that it has issued senior loans totaling EUR 15 million (USD 16 million) to Halkbank AD Skopje, which describes itself as Macedonia’s “first downscaling bank,
The government of Albania recently announced that fondiBesa, a Tirana-based lender to micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, has agreed to acquire the local arm of US-based nonprofit VisionFund for
The Currency Exchange Fund (TCX), which is based in the Netherlands, recently raised USD 10 million from the UN-managed Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT) to reduce the cost of foreign-exchange hedging for “impact lenders” funding microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Myanmar. TCX provides this hedging service, absorbing the currency-exchange risk on the loans, so the lenders can commit US dollars while the MFIs access funding denominated in kyat. Via multiple microloan repayment cycles over three years, the MFIs are expected to gain sufficient liquidity from the LIFT-supported facility to fund
Austria’s C-Quadrat Asset Management informed MicroCapital today that its Dual Return Vision Microfinance and Dual Return Vision Microfinance-Local Currency funds loaned a total approximately equivalent to USD 22 million during November to unspecified microfinance institutions (MFIs) in
The Entrepreneur Financial Centre (EFC) of Tunisia, a microfinance institution (MFI) operated by Canada’s Développement International Desjardins (DID), recently obtained an equity investment of EUR 1 million (USD 1.1 million) from Société de Promotion et de Participation pour La Coopération Economique (Proparco), a development finance institution of the French government’s Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD). AFD also committed EUR 1 million (USD 1.1 million) for
Symbiotics SA, a Swiss firm specializing in micro-, small and medium-sized enterprise investment, recently issued bonds totaling EUR 10 million (USD 10.6 million) for Coris Bank International SA, an institution in Burkina Faso whose mission includes a particular emphasis on serving small and medium-sized enterprises. The issue was transacted through
The US-based multilateral World Bank Group (WBG) recently announced that 16 additional financial institutions have committed to partner to work toward “universal financial access” (UFA) by 2020, bringing the size of the group to 30 organizations. The new partners, which have committed to helping a total of 168 million people open new transaction accounts by 2020, are:
(1) the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance, which operates in Africa, Asia and the Middle East;
(2) Ant Financial (Ali Baba Group) of China;
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the US-based World Bank Group, and Cathay United Bank, a Taiwan-based commercial bank, recently announced that they will each lend USD 25 million to Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank) to support small businesses in Vietnam.
Oikocredit, a cooperative “social investment” fund based in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, recently increased its equity stake in Banco para el Fomento a las Iniciativas Económicas (Banco FIE), “more than doubling” its investment in the Bolivian microfinance bank.
The European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE), a Luxembourg-based investment fund focused on 16 Central Asian and Southeast European countries, in partnership with the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Rabo International Advisory Services (RIAS), a subsidiary of Netherlands-based Rabobank Group, recently announced that the EFSE Development Facility will “cover part of the costs of a multi-year capacity building plan” aimed at expanding Albania-based FED Invest’s ability to provide financial services to farmers and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in rural areas.
The European Investment Bank (EIB), the Luxembourg-based long-term lender of the European Union (EU), and the US-based multilateral World Bank Group (WBG) recently announced a joint initiative, Boost MENA, to support “first-time entrepreneurs”, particularly women and young people, in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Tigo Tanzania, a brand of Swedish telecom provider Millicom, recently announced that it will expand its partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the government of Tanzania’s Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) to register and provide birth certificates to an estimated 200,000 children under the age of five in the Iringa and Njombe regions.
The Canadian government’s International Development and Research Centre (IDRC) and Malaysia-based Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), recently signed a three-year partnership with the goal of “develop[ing] new knowledge and foster[ing] peer learning on financial inclusion” among AFI’s 123 members which include financial regulators and institutions in approximately 90 developing countries.
Agricultural Cooperative Development International/Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA), a US-based nonprofit that implements “sustainable international development” projects related to supporting entrepreneurs in developing nations, recently registered a new subsidiary, AV Ventures LLC, which is designed to build “impact” funds that invest in agricultural small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in an effort to promote “more inclusive, responsible supply chains.”
The government of Kenya recently passed legislation to cap the interest rates on bank loans at 4 percent per year above an undisclosed benchmark reference rate and also set the minimum deposit interest rate at 70 percent of the reference rate.