MEET THE BOSS: Arnaud Ventura of PlaNet Finance and MicroCred

Arnaud Ventura is Co-founder and Vice President of PlaNet Finance; he is also President and CEO of MicroCred. He is based in Paris.

MicroCapital: What is the story of PlaNet Finance’s founding?

AV: PlaNet Finance was started a little over 10 years ago. In 1997, after completing a master’s degree in Information & Communication Technology (ICT) and initiating a couple of internet ventures in France and Asia, I moved to Buenos Aires to work on the development of a bank in Argentina. After a couple of years, on the verge of pursuing a long career in banking, I decided that – before entering the traditional business path – I would like to contribute to creating a better world. At the time I thought the best contribution would be to start a nonprofit venture, which would use ICT to support the development of microfinance, health, education and NGOs. While working on the project’s design with a group of friends, I contacted Jacques Attali on a web forum to let him know about my initiative. Although I did not know him personally, Mr Attali was well known as a writer and advisor to the French President Mitterrand. After a first phone conversation, we eventually met in Paris in 1997. I had the opportunity to present him with my initiative, and he spoke of a major paper he had written for a conference at the Aspen Institute describing the failure of international institutions to reduce poverty in the twentieth century and the potential of information technology and microfinance to change this fact in the twenty-first century. The paper ended with a proposal to create PlaNet Bank. Jacques offered me the opportunity to write the business plan for what would become PlaNet Finance. This is how we started in 1998.

MC: What was the vision for PlaNet Finance at its beginning?

AV: The initial project was to create a virtual bank to support the microfinance sector. But in the course of 1998, we launched a pilot project that I led in Kenya. We received advice from numerous leaders in the field such as Muhammad Yunus and Kimanthi Mutua, who supported us from the beginning. This led to the transformation of PlaNet Bank, a virtual bank supporting microfinance, into PlaNet Finance, whose goal would be to provide both expertise and finance to the microfinance sector.

MC: What were the first years like? How did the organization develop?

AV: We started with very ambitious ideas, but modest resources. One might say that PlaNet grew in two stages: from 1998 to 2003 PlaNet Finance grew from an organization with two permanent staff members in Paris to an international nonprofit with more than 80 staff members running programs in 30 countries. Funding was mostly from private sector contributions or international institutions’ grants and contracts. During this first stage, PlaNet Finance developed programs supporting local microfinance NGOs, providing them with training, rating and financing (with local currency loans through MicroFund). In a second stage from 2004 to 2008, the organization grew and restructured itself around separate business units operating as autonomous companies with distinct management and staff. At the end of 2008, PlaNet Finance Group included more than 700 staff in close to 80 countries.

MC: What is next for PlaNet Finance?

AV: In the next 5 to 10 years, we will continue to develop our business units to support more people. We will also pursue innovation and the creation of new activities to address the challenges of financial inclusion. We are now working in two areas that could drastically accelerate the growth of microfinance: one is based on the use of mobile phones to accelerate the outreach of microfinance and the second one uses the internet to increase access to funding for microfinance banks.

MC: How has your role changed as PlaNet has grown?

AV: At the creation of PlaNet Finance I was its CEO, and Jacques Attali was its President. From the start I had the chance to lead most of the development of PlaNet Finance: its geographical expansion, the creation of many of our country operations and later the creation of its different business units – from consulting and technical assistance to rating and financing. In 2005, I began to focus on launching and running MicroCred as its President & CEO. MicroCred is the Business Unit of PlaNet Finance that invests in the creation of “greenfield” microfinance banks.

MC: What do you identify as the area of greatest innovation in microfinance?

AV: With MicroCred, I am focused on building new microfinance banks. I am very interested in how we can use mobile phone technology to build new types of microfinance banks. Next week, I will be in the Philippines to meet with SMART, one of the largest mobile phone providers in the country. They have 35 million clients, 7 million of which are using phones to transfer money. We just signed a major agreement to look at how the use of mobile money can accelerate microfinance’s outreach. I find this new possibility very exciting.

MC: You are speaking to us from Madagascar; what are you doing there?

AV: Madagascar is one of the countries where we are the most active. PlaNet Finance provides advisory services and has 3 major programs there to support microfinance institutions, while MicroCred has a microfinance bank in the country. In total PlaNet Finance Group has close to 200 staff members working in Madagascar. MicroCred Madagascar was started only two years ago and has become the largest microfinance institution in Antananarivo, the capital, where it operates today with seven branches and over 10,000 clients. It is already a profitable bank.

MC: What is your most important achievement to date?

AV: In over ten years, we have built a global organization staffed by local experts. Because we are global, we regularly cross-fertilize ideas among countries. Because our people are local, we can operate with lower costs and greater cultural awareness. I have constantly been warned over these 10 years that we are trying to do too much at the same time. Nonetheless, in many of our business units, we are established among the top leaders today. I hope we can continue to remain so and do even better in years to come.

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