Articles

At the heart of IFC’s approach to blended finance are efforts to create and help sustain private markets with strong development impact. This note explores the role of blended finance in creating markets and looks at lessons from three blended finance projects and structures—and how each contributed to the creation of markets that are scalable, sustainable, and resilient. The projects illustrate the value of using blended finance to kick-start markets and to push to achieve long-term financing on commercial terms.

MEDICI's Diwakar Mandal shares the factors of a strong economic growth, rising interest rates, and a growing digitization in the lending space by the emergence of alternative lenders that have been key drivers of growth in SME lending. He says, banks have traditionally been a custodian of customer relationships in the SME lending space.

Since the 2012 launch of M-Shwari, a mobile banking service which offers a savings account and access to digital credit, the market for digital credit has expanded rapidly in Kenya. Digital credit is now offered by the three largest Kenyan banks (Kenya Commercial Bank, Equity Bank, and Cooperative Bank), as well as a growing number of FinTechs and non-bank institutions. Digital credit providers have developed different models to score and deliver credit to customers.

Some 99% of firms in the OECD are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and they generate about 70% of all jobs. But in order to stay vital and competitive in today’s global economy, SMEs need support. OECD asked their  panel of experts for their views.

Why do SMEs matter for productivity and inclusive growth, and what new policies are needed for their development?

The Economic Times review of the Economic Survey 2017-18 says that the amount of credit or loans disbursed by banks amounted to Rs 26,041 billion as on November 2017, but 82.6% of this was pocketed by large enterprises. For millions of SMEs in the country, banks only lent out 17.4 % of the total credit. Learn more about the survey and how MSME climate in India as well as analysis of the report and the pitch for peer to peer lending as a solution for India's MSMEs.

More than 40 percent of African entrepreneurs cite access to finance as the major factor limiting their growth, according to World Bank Enterprise Surveys. In this article, the author says that West African start-ups and innovative young SMEs are indeed facing the classic ‘valley of death’ — the space between where the entrepreneur’s own resources from family and friends (“love money”) gets depleted and when the company is financially viable enough to attract later-stage investment and financing available on the market.

Maria Roat is Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Small Business Administration explains how small businesses are at risk for cyber attacks and explains how her agency and others are working to help owners protect themselves. 

"Small businesses are targets, and many are unprepared for cybersecurity challenges including ever-changing and increasing threats from malware, viruses and ransomware against intellectual property and company data. Nor are they adequately prepared to recognize or respond to an internal or external incident," she says.

Brazilian Guga Stocco is an advisor and board member of companies like B3, the biggest stock market in the world. He co-founded Domo Invest, a fund that raised R$ 100 million for investments in Internet and Fintech. Stocco was also responsible for the creation of the first fully digital bank in Brazil with more than 300,000 clients and projects such as online bank account opening and open banking platform, allowing fintechs to access APIs easily and explore Brazilian Market.

Lav Odorovic is the co-founder and CEO of Penta. Odorovic is a serial entrepreneur, having set up and exited his first startup by the tender age of 21. After working several corporate jobs, he, together with several entrepreneurial friends, launched Penta, a Berlin-based neobank, offering banking services to early-stage technology companies.