Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – June Live Session The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – June Live Session The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative...
The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi)
Gender Finance
Aug 04, 2022
Access to finance has always been a significant constraint for women entrepreneurs, hindering their growth prospects. Lack of sex-disaggregated data has made it difficult to close the $1.7 trillion gap in financing faced globally by over 400 million women-owned businesses. A GPFI Workshop on “New Approaches to Closing Finance & Data Gaps for...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - July Live Session The SME Finance Forum since its inception in 2015 has been featuring innovative fintech, helping connect members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
Just six years ago, more than half of SME retailers’ transactions were paper based – in the form of cash or cheques. That world is long gone. Why? A large part is because Covid-19 gave digital payments a huge boost. The pandemic made many physical transactions impossible over a significant period, and made digital alternative payments, whether by...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – May Live Session The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping to connect its members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
This blog is a summary of our “SME Lending & Social Impact in India” webinar with U GRO Capital. Small businesses in India employ over 100 million people or 40% of India’s workforce and account for 29% of India’s GDP and 49% of its exports [1] . The current SME finance gap in the Indian context amounts to $221 billion or 10% of the country’s...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – June Live Session The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping to connect its members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - Seventh Session with Fintechs The SME Finance Forum since its inception in 2015 has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping connecting members to different technologies and opportunities. Through our virtual marketplace, we offer in particular a monthly pitch session. On February 16th, the seventh...
In March 2022, we launched our 10th pulse survey with more targeted questions to understand how our members and their SME clients are adjusting to the new normal. We received responses from 118 member institutions operating in 181 economies. Among the respondents, 83 are lenders and 35 are non-lenders. Level of Operation The overall story here is...
If the unofficial theme of last year’s MENA Credit Guarantee Conference was how to move past the Covid emergency, this year it was about preparing for what comes next. Adulrahman Hesham al-Suwaidi, CEO of Qatar Development Bank (this year’s co-host) set the tone in his opening remarks, encouraging speakers to look ahead at how guarantee...
This blog is the summary of the virtual marketplace from March 9th, the SME Finance Forum hosted this event featuring three fintech and one DFI (Development Finance Institution) to share their experiences and different products and services in SME Finance. In this online session, Robert Scheunpflug ( Shanghai F-Road Commercial Services Co. Ltd ),...
This blog is a summary of the G20 Workshop on Digital and Innovative Financial Products and Services for MSMEs Beyond Credit . G20 countries’ Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) organized the virtual workshop with the Indonesia G20 Presidency on March 2, 2022. More than 500 industry leaders participated in the event and joined the...
A summary of the open webinar on “Beyond Funding, What Do Women Need to Advance Their Businesses?” SME Finance Forum and Women’s World Banking’s hosted panel explores how financial service providers can leverage business support services to empower women-led businesses with the skills, networks, and resources needed to reach their growth potential...
A summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - Fifth Session - Fintechs The SME Finance Forum has been featuring a series of fintech, connecting members to different techonologies and opportunities. Particularly on November 11th, the fifth SME Finance Forum Marketplace session gathered six fintech companies offering services from e-lending, public...
A virtual marketplace summary . On January 12 th , the Forum hosted a virtual marketplace featuring six leading investors in the industry to share their experience in SME finance. In this online session, Elizabeth Davrishashvili ( FINCA Impact Finance ), Luz Leyva ( REGMIFA ), Chris Wehbé ( Lendable ), Edmund Higenbottam ( Verdant Capital ),...
Dear Members, Partners, and Friends, As 2021 draws to an end, let me take this opportunity to thank you for your continued engagement and supports. 2021 has undoubtedly been another challenging year for all of us, including the MSMEs which we are trying to serve. We are proud that so many of our members reported, in our surveys and check-in calls...
Credit scoring has the potential to improve access to capital and financial inclusion around the world. As financial institutions begin to have access to different types of data, the variety of credit scoring mechanisms have increased. One way that financial institutions have kept track of these alternative data and found ways to understand them...
This is a summary of the Sneak Preview of the World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery. On September 30th, WDR Director Leora Klapper and Lead Author Martin Holtmann made a special advance presentation, hosted by Matthew Gamser, CEO of the SME Finance Forum, sharing findings of the upcoming 2022 World Development Report (...
This blog is the summary of our Member Spotlight with vcita. In this member spotlight session, we were honored to have vcita, which helps small business owners build and manage their business through an easy-to-use business management platform. vcita's digital tools help business owners automate time-consuming administrative tasks like scheduling...
A virtual marketplace summary. On September 22, 2021, five leading fintechs presented their latest products and services at SME Finance Forum’s virtual marketplace – a match-making platform that facilitates partnership and collaboration between financial institutions, fintech companies, development financial institutions, as well as investors...
This blog is a summary of our webinar on digital financial services work for women . Women’s World Banking (WWB ) conducted research in 2019, on an emerging business model known as social commerce entrepreneurship with enterprises blending social media, e-commerce, payments and delivery platforms in India and Indonesia. One of the key findings of...
