From its head office in Zurich, the international impact asset manager responsAbility Investments has closed a US$175 million securitization of loans to microfinance institutions and those that finance small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets. Some 30,000 small businesses and 5.6 million microfinance borrowers will benefit.
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Imagine being without a bank account, having no means of carrying out formal financial transactions, storing money, sending and receiving payments. That is the case for roughly 40 percent of the world’s working-age adults, about two billion people.
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Representatives of sacred places and cities that attract spiritual pilgrims are working with highly placed conservationists to create a dedicated fund for their environmental protection by relying on the investment community’s growing commitment to ethical or impact investment.
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The European Investment Fund and Nest Bank earlier this month signed a microfinance agreement aimed at supporting micro-businesses in Poland under the new EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI).
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Whether you are a seed, start-up, growing, established or mature company – at one point or another – you need to raise capital.
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Smallholder households, cultivating less than five acres, have financial needs that have been ignored until now, yet without this information, it’s tough for financial service providers to supply smallholders with services, such as mobile money.
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Sir Fazle Hasan Abed of Bangladesh, founder and chair of BRAC, one of the world’s largest and most effective anti-poverty organizations, was honored as 2015 World Food Prize Laureate earlier this month. He built the success of BRAC on empowering women and girls.
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With the beginnings of a track record to back up its claims, finance remains a solid bet for impact investors. The future looks positive as a new generation of impact-backed financial service providers hone their skills, diversify their products and discover untapped markets of underserved clients in different parts of the globe. In this blog, part three of a three-part series on impact investing in finance, we chart the future of investing in social finance.
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Recent years have seen a burst of innovation in the social finance sector with impact investors putting capital behind many of the most exciting and effective new approaches. In this blog, part two of a three part series on impact investing in finance, we look at the different kinds of finance and chart the growth of a sector on fire.
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If you were asked to guess which sector attracted the biggest proportion of impact investment, which would you say it was? If you chose anything other than financial services, you guessed wrong. Impact investors have been enthusiastic backers of financial service businesses since the early days of social investing. In this blog, the first of a three-part series on impact investing in financial services, we explore the reasons why finance remains such an important sector for impact investors—and what their relationship means for the social investing sector today.
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