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Offered exclusively to our members, the SME Finance Forum’s study visits are an integral part of our peer learning opportunities. Whether members are looking to expand their SME lending, in the nascent stage of their SME lending, or just thinking about starting SME lending, the study visits offer the opportunity to learn best practices from highly respected peers.
Mobile financial services and digital customer engagement solutions provider Vipera announced a partnership with Mambu on Friday, which it described as “a leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) alternative” to traditional core systems powering banking and lending.
SME Finance Forum's annual flagship event, to be held on 1-3 November in Berlin, Germany, will bring 400+ senior executives from commercial banks, development finance institutions, fintech companies, as well as regulators to focus on leveraging digital banking to serve MSME.
FinCompare, a Fintech startup based in Berlin, has raised €2.5 million in seed funding led by SpeedInvest and UNIQA – Austria’s largest insurance group. Several angel investors from the finance sector also participated in the seed round. The financing will be used to boost market penetration, improve the technology as well as aiding marketing and personnel.
The Global SME Finance Forum 2017 will be held November 1-3 in Berlin, Germany. The annual flagship event of the SME Finance Forum will bring 400+ senior executives from commercial banks, development finance institutions, fintech companies, as well as regulators to focus on leveraging digital banking to serve MSMEs.
The Global SME Finance Forum is an annual global meeting of leaders from banks, fintech companies and government institutions, working on accelerating access to finance for small businesses. This year’s event will take place in Berlin, Germany, which also holds the G20 Presidency.
The action-packed 3–day event will include study visits to high-performing institutions, a B2B marketplace, fintech expos, panels, working groups as well as networking sessions and a gala dinner.
Two Berlin-based fintech firms, Penta and SolarisBank, have joined forces to provide German businesses with “fast access to bank accounts”.
Penta offers bank accounts for businesses (including start-ups), while SolarisBank provides a Banking-as-a-Platform service and holds a full banking licence.
By Thierry Snders, CEO of MEKAR -
Despite the cold, I was warmly welcomed by Anna Klabunde from the Federal Ministry of Finance and Matt Gamser from IFC and founder of the SME Finance Forum. They were not alone. There were 100 delegates from the 20 largest economies. Central bankers, secretaries of state, directors of development finance institutions, and there were 4 FinTech entrepreneurs from Uganda, Denmark, South Africa and myself as only representative from Indonesia.
KfW Group and GRENKE AG have signed a global loan agreement for lease finance with a volume of EUR 100 million at KfW's offices in Frankfurt am Main. This allows SMEs, the self-employed and start-ups throughout Germany to benefit from the attractive leasing conditions being offered by GRENKE AG and KfW for new acquisitions.
Today we’re very lucky to be joined by Sophie Guibaud, Head of European Expansion for Fidor Bank, one of Europe’s original and best known digital-only banks.
Originally launched in Germany in 2009, Fidor expanded into the UK in 2015.
Prior to joining Fidor, Sophie led product strategy and commercialization at Bankable, a white-label banking platform provider. Before that, she was the Chief Marketing Officer at HelloFresh, a Rocket Internet-backed ready-to-cook meal delivery startup.
