MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: PBU Invests $15m in Nordic Microfinance Initiative’s NMI Fund IV to Invest in Women in Africa, Asia

Paedagogernes Pension (PBU), Denmark’s Pension Fund of Early Childhood Teachers, recently invested approximately USD 15 million, denominated in kroner, in NMI Fund IV, which is managed by the Nordic Microfinance Initiative (NMI), a Norway-based public-private partnership that supports microfinance institutions in developing countries.

The goal of the investment is to reduce women’s “Dependence on men, their inability to borrow money from a bank and social and cultural norms [that] make it difficult for these women to have a place in economic life and thus have an impact on their own future.”

PBU, which is owned by its 115,000 teacher-members, manages pensions valued at DKK 71 billion (USD 11 billion).

NMI was founded in 2008 with the goal of creating jobs and wealth via financial inclusion. The organization first launched the NMI Global Fund to invest in microfinance institutions that are deemed “large and sustainable” as well as the NMI Frontier Fund to focus on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In 2013, it initiated the NMI Fund III to invest in microfinance institutions considered to be financially sustainable or likely to become so in the near future. Launched in 2019, NMI Fund IV supports financial service providers that supply “social loans (e.g. for education or housing), savings, micro-leasing, micro-insurance or payment services” in Africa and Asia. The funds hold aggregate assets of USD 275 million, including debt and equity placements in 21 MFIs that reach 8 million people, of whom “95 percent are women and 71 percent reside in rural areas.” NMI is one-third owned by: (1) Norfund, which is backed by the government of Norway; (2) the Danish Investment Fund for Developing Countries, which is known by its Danish acronym IFU; and (3) a group of five private companies.

Sources and Additional Resources

NMI news item
https://www.nmimicro.no/news/nmi-welcomes-new-investor-pbu/

PBU homepage
https://www.pbu.dk/

Did you know that MicroCapital publishes the MicroCapital Monitor newspaper each month? Find out more at http://www.microcapital.org/products-page/.