MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: IDH Farmfit Fund Acquires Equity Stake in LendXS, Provider of Fintech for Microfinance Institutions Serving Smallholder Farmers

The IDH Farmfit Fund, which is facilitated by the Sustainable Trade Initiative, a Netherlands-based NGO known by its Dutch acronym IDH, recently acquired a 21-percent stake in LendXS, a Netherlands-based financial technology (fintech) platform for rural financial institutions. The pricing of the transaction remains confidential.

Eelko Bronkhorst, the CEO of LendXS, stated, “Transaction costs of smallholder finance accounts on average for around 60 percent of the interest rates charged. Our long-time experience with financial transactions enables us to design fintech solutions and advisory services that bring down these costs significantly.”

Established in 2019, LendXS offers a set of tools that “allow rural lenders to onboard smallholder farmers and small agri enterprises at reduced cost and to develop rural credit portfolios at lower risk.” LendXS, which operates in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, is a unit of Financial Access Consulting Services, a former subsidiary of Netherlands-based ING Bank. Financial Access has offices in Indonesia, Kenya, the Netherlands and Uganda.

Founded in 2008 by the government of the Netherlands, IDH seeks to promote value chains and trade that will “have large-scale positive impact on climate change, deforestation, gender, living wages and living incomes.” In partnership with approximately 600 public and private entities, IDH has reached 4 million farmers and generated about USD 390 million in investment into the private sector. The organization disbursed funds totaling EUR 28.6 million (USD 34.8 million) during 2019.

By Bradley Shulman, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

IDH press release
https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/news/idh-farmfit-fund-invests-in-lendxs-to-jointly-accelerate-smallholder-finance/

LendXS homepage
https://lendxs.com/

Financial Access homepage
http://www.financialxs.com/

IDH Farmfit Fund webpage
https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/farmfit-fund/

IDH homepage
https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/

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